Snakes, shapes, and gradient vector flow
- 1 March 1998
- journal article
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in IEEE Transactions on Image Processing
- Vol. 7 (3) , 359-369
- https://doi.org/10.1109/83.661186
Abstract
Snakes, or active contours, are used extensively in computer vision and image processing applications, particularly to locate object boundaries. Problems associated with initialization and poor convergence to boundary concavities, however, have limited their utility. This paper presents a new external force for active contours, largely solving both problems. This external force, which we call gradient vector flow (GVF), is computed as a diffusion of the gradient vectors of a gray-level or binary edge map derived from the image. It differs fundamentally from traditional snake external forces in that it cannot be written as the negative gradient of a potential function, and the corresponding snake is formulated directly from a force balance condition rather than a variational formulation. Using several two-dimensional (2-D) examples and one three-dimensional (3-D) example, we show that GVF has a large capture range and is able to move snakes into boundary concavities.Keywords
This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit:
- Gradient vector flow: a new external force for snakesPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2002
- Image segmentation by reaction-diffusion bubblesPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2002
- A class of constrained clustering algorithms for object boundary extractionIEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 1996
- Multi-resolution algorithms for active contour modelsPublished by Springer Nature ,1996
- Dynamic contour: A texture approach and contour operationsThe Visual Computer, 1995
- An active contour model for mapping the cortexIEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 1995
- A dynamic finite element surface model for segmentation and tracking in multidimensional medical images with application to cardiac 4D image analysisComputerized Medical Imaging and Graphics, 1995
- Tracking deformable objects in the plane using an active contour modelPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,1993
- Finite-element methods for active contour models and balloons for 2-D and 3-D imagesPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,1993
- On active contour models and balloonsCVGIP: Image Understanding, 1991