Active Contours, Level Sets, and Image

Segmentation

Chunming Li
Institute of Imaging Science
Vanderbilt University

URL: www.vuiis.vanderbilt.edu/~licm
E-mail: chunming.li@vanderbilt.edu
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 Outline

1. Curve evolution and level set methods:

• Curve Evolution: from snake to general curve evolution
• Level Set Methods: basic concepts and methods
2. Numerical issues:
• Difference scheme: upwind scheme, ENO interpolation…
• Reinitialization, velocity extension …
3. Introduction to calculus of variations and applications:
• Segmentation: variational level set, shape prior …
• Denoising: diffusion, TV, …

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2D Level Set

Click to play the movie

Click to play the movie

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3D Level Set

Click to play the movie

Click to play the movie

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 More Applications of Level Sets

1. Fluid Dynamics
2. Computer Graphics: Surface Rendering, Animation…
3. Material Science
4. Others…

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 Advantages of Active Contours and Level Sets

1. Nice representation of object boundary:

• Smooth and closed, good for shape analysis and recognition
and other applications.
2. Sub-pixel accuracy.
3. Can incorporate various information such as shape prior and
motion.
4. Mature mathematical tools can be used: calculus of variations,
PDE, differential geometry …

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Snake Models

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 Image Segmentation: Classic Methods

An image of blood vessel Thresholding Edge detection

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 Parametric Active Contours (Kass et al 1987)

For a contour , define energy:

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 Evolution of Active Contours

Steepest descent:

Internal force: Regularizes the contour.

External force: Drives the contour towards the desired

object boundary.

In the classic snake model, the external force field is:

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External Force

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 Gradient Vector Flow (Xu and Prince, 1998)

Find a vector field v(x,y) that minimize the energy functional:

Solve two decoupled PDEs:

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An Example
Gradientvector
f / | f flow
|

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 Advantages of GVF Snake

• Significantly increase capture range

• Be able to detect concave object boundary

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General Curve Evolution

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 Differential Geometry of Curves
• A planar curve C is a function , with

• Tangent vector

• Normal vector

• Arc length between and

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 Curvature

• Use arc length as the parameter.

The tangent vector is a unit vector
• The unit vector defines the direction of the curve
• Curvature describes how fast the curve changes its direction.
• Take derivative again:
• Note that

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 Curvature (Cont’d)
• Both and are orthogonal to
is parallel to

• For general parameterization the curvature

can be expressed as:

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 Dynamic Curves

• A dynamic curve is a time dependent curve

• The motion of the curve is governed by a curve evolution equation:

• The tangent vector and normal vector forms a basis of .

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 Geometric Curve Evolution

• Theorem: Let be an intrinsic quantity. If evolves according to

Then, there exists another parameterization of such that

is solution of

where at the same point

• General geometric curve evolution:

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 Constant Speed Motion and
Mean Curvature Motion
• Constant Speed Motion • Mean curvature motion
(Area decreasing/increasing) (Length shortening flow)

Click to play the movie Click to play the movie

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• Constant Speed Motion • Mean curvature motion
(Area decreasing flow) (Length shortening flow)

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 Why MCM Shortens Curve Length?
• Mean curvature motion is the steepest descent
flow (or gradient flow) that minimizes arc length of the contour:

Click to play the movie

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 Geodesic Active Contour (Caselles et al, 1997)
• Euclidean metric: • Minimize a weighted length of C

where

• This is a Riemannian metric.

• How to find the geodesic?

• Solve the gradient flow equation:

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 Geodesic Active Contour
• How does the evolution stop the contour at the edges?

External force

• The external force has two opposite directions on

the two sides of the object boundary.
• The curvature term regularizes the curve: shorten and smooth.

• Problem: The contour cannot progress into concavity.

• Add a balloon/pressure force:
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 Example

Click to play the movie

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 Difficulties of Parameterized Curve Evolution
• Re-parameterization during evolution: very difficult for 3D surface

• Cannot handle topological changes

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 Solutions

Some approaches within parametric active contour

framework:
• McInerney and Terzopoulos, 1995
• Ray and Acton, 2003
• Li, Liu, and Fox, 2005

More natural and better approaches:

• Level set methods

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Level Set Methods

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 Level Set Representation of Curves

zero level

zero level

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 Advantages of Level Set Methods

• All computation is carried out on a fixed grid, no need for

re-parameterization.

• Topological changes are handled naturally.

• More …

• Also have some disadvantages, will be discussed later.

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 Level Set Functions

contour

Level set functions

with the same zero
level set

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 Signed Distance Function
Signed distance function
Contour C




A signed distance function is defined by :

 dist ( x, C ) if x is outside C

 (x)   0 x C
 dist ( x, C )
 if x is inside C
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 Useful Calculus Facts in Level Set Formulation

• If a curve is a level set of a function

then, the normal vector and the curvature can be computed
from the embedding function

• The surface (or line) integral of a quantity p(x) over the

zero level surface (or contour) of

• The volume (or area) integral of p(x) over

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 From Curve Evolution to Level Set Evolution

• Curve evolution
where F is the speed function, N is normal vector to the curve C

• Embed the dynamic curve as the zero level set of a time

dependent function , i.e.

• Take derivative with respect to time

• Level set evolution:

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 Special Cases

• Mean curvature flow

• Constant Speed Motion

• Geodesic active contours

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Demo of GAC

Click to play the movie

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 Unstable Evolution and Need for Reinitialization
Zero level set of degraded
Degraded level set function,
level set function
50 iterations, time step=0.1

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Procedure of Standard Level Set Methods
Initialization

Evolve level set function

Reinitialization

N
converge?

Y
stop
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 More Details

• Difference Scheme: finite difference, upwind scheme.

• ENO interpolation
• Velocity Extension
• Narrow Band Implementation
• More… Next time

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Questions

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Thank you

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