Boundary finding with new balloon models

Here, the authors apply a new balloon model to segment medical MR images. The new balloon model differs fundamentally from the original balloon models presented by Cohen et al. (1991, 1993) in that the authors have introduced a spatially-varying internal parameter function and a new description of the external force. In this way, the authors can overcome some problems encountered with the original balloon models and snake models presented by Kass et al. (1988) while retaining the good features in those models. The efficacy of the proposed model and algorithm is demonstrated with experiments on MR images of heart ventricles, blood vessel, brain and bone