Fuzzy line snakes

Closed flexible contours extracted from images to represent object outlines are often called snakes. This paper explores and extends snakes to extract contour features from images for modeling and pattern recognition. Many contour extraction algorithms have a common formulation as a constrained optimization problem. One version, called the constrained fuzzy clustering algorithm, links fuzzy clustering and snakes-the resulting contour being called a fuzzy snake. An extension of this result replaces the snake vertices with fuzzy line exemplars. The resulting structure is called a fuzzy line snake; some of its properties are discussed and an example is presented