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Fast level set image and video segmentation using new evolution indicator operators

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Abstract

We propose an effective level set evolution method for robust object segmentation in real images. We construct an effective region indicator and an multiscale edge indicator, and use these two indicators to adaptively guide the evolution of the level set function. The multiscale edge indicator is defined in the gradient domain of the multiscale feature-preserving filtered image. The region indicator is built on the similarity map between image pixels and user specified interest regions, where the similarity map is computed using Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM). Then we combine these two methods to develop a new mixing edge stop function, which makes the level set method more robust to initial active contour setting, and forces the level set to evolve adaptively based on the image content. Furthermore, we apply an acceleration approach to speed up our evolution process, which yields real time segmentation performance. Finally, we extend the proposed approach to video segmentation for achieving effective target tracking results. As the results show, our approach is effective for image and video segmentation and works well to accurately detect the complex object boundaries in real-time.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partly supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2012CB725303), NSFC (No. 60803081, No. 61070081), Open Project Program of the State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology (kfkt2010B05), the Open Project Program of the State Key Lab of CAD&CG (Grant No. A1208), and Luojia Outstanding Young Scholar Program of Wuhan University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Chunxia Xiao & Jiajia Gan

  2. School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Xiangyun Hu

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  1. Chunxia Xiao
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  2. Jiajia Gan
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  3. Xiangyun Hu
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Correspondence to Chunxia Xiao.

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Xiao, C., Gan, J. & Hu, X. Fast level set image and video segmentation using new evolution indicator operators. Vis Comput 29, 27–39 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-012-0672-5

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