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A survey of level set method for image segmentation with intensity inhomogeneity

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Abstract

Image segmentation is a fundamental task in computer vision and image processing. Due to the presence of high noise, low resolution and intensity inhomogeneity, it is still a difficult problem in the practical applications. Level set methods have been widely used in image processing and computer vision. During the past decades, many models based on level set methods have been proposed to solve image segmentation with intensity inhomogeneity. It is necessary to conduct a comprehensive review and comparison of these models. Specifically, level set methods can be categorized into two groups, including edge-based level set methods (EBLSMs) and region-based level set methods (RBLSMs). This paper reviews some of the recent advances in EBLSMs and RBLSMs for segmenting image with intensity inhomogeneity. Their advantages and disadvantages are discussed in an objective point of view, and their performance is compared on image segmentation with intensity inhomogeneity. Finally, this paper further explores and discusses some open questions in segmenting images with intensity inhomogeneity.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. This work is supported by National Key R&D Program of China (GrantNo. 2017YFB0503004) and Hubei Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No. 2019CFB797).

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

    Haiping Yu, Fazhi He & Yiteng Pan

  2. School of Computer Science, Huanggang Normal University, Huanggang, China

    Haiping Yu

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Yu, H., He, F. & Pan, Y. A survey of level set method for image segmentation with intensity inhomogeneity. Multimed Tools Appl 79, 28525–28549 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-09311-9

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