Image segmentation in a kernel-induced space

A novel level set multiphase image segmentation method combined with kernel mapping is presented. A kernel function maps implicitly the original data into data of a higher dimension so that the piecewise constant model becomes applicable. The goal is to consider several types of noise by a single model. Gradient flow equations are iteratively derived in order to minimize the segmentation functional with respect to the partition, in a first step, and the regions parameters in a second step. Using a common kernel function, we verified the effectiveness of the method by a quantitative and comparative performance evaluation over experiments on synthetic images, as well as a variety of real images such as medical, SAR, and natural images.