Segmentation of edge preserving gradient vector flow: an approach toward automatically initializing and splitting of snakes

Active contours or snakes have been extensively utilized in handling image segmentation and classification problems. In traditional active contour models, snake initialization is performed manually by users, and topological changes, such as splitting of the snake, can not be automatically handled. In this paper, we introduce a new method to solve the snake initialization and splitting problem, based on an area segmentation approach: the external force field is segmented first, and then the snake initialization and splitting can be automatically performed by using the segmented external force field. Such initialization and splitting produces multiple snakes, each of which is within the capture range associated to an object and evolved to the object boundary. The external force used in this paper is a gradient vector flow with an edge-preserving property (EPGVF), which can prevent the snakes from passing over weak boundaries. To segment the external force field, we represent it with a graph, and a graph-theory approach can be taken to determine the membership of each pixel. Experimental results establish the effectiveness of the proposed approach.