On using an analogy to heat flow for shape extraction

Direkoglu C., Nixon M. S.

PATTERN ANALYSIS AND APPLICATIONS, vol.16, no.2, pp.125-139, 2013 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus) identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 16 Issue: 2
  • Publication Date: 2013
  • Doi Number: 10.1007/s10044-011-0223-0
  • Journal Name: PATTERN ANALYSIS AND APPLICATIONS
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus
  • Page Numbers: pp.125-139
  • Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus Affiliated: No

Abstract

We introduce a novel evolution-based segmentation algorithm which uses the heat flow analogy to gain practical advantage. The proposed algorithm consists of two parts. In the first part, we represent a particular heat conduction problem in the image domain to roughly segment the region of interest. Then we use geometric heat flow to complete the segmentation, by smoothing extracted boundaries and removing noise inside the prior segmented region. The proposed algorithm is compared with active contour models and is tested on synthetic and medical images. Experimental results indicate that our approach works well in noisy conditions without pre-processing. It can detect multiple objects simultaneously. It is also computationally more efficient and easier to control and implement in comparison with active contour models.