A simulated charged fluid for deformable models

Deformable models are important and popular techniques for extracting the shape of objects in medical images. We used a simulation of a charged fluid to guide the evolution of a propagating interface to segment objects in brain MR and CT images. The charged fluid was simulated as a system of charged particles that exert a repelling electric force upon each other. In our approach, the boundary of the segmenting object was determined by the image gradients, which were modeled as potential wells that stopped the propagating front The simulation was evolved in two steps that were governed by Poisson´s equation. The contours corresponding to the propagating fronts were merged based upon the charge sharing of the fluid elements. We demonstrate the evolution of this new deformable model in segmenting noisy phantom images and medical images.