An active surface model for volumetric image segmentation

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a graph cut based active surface model that incorporates graph cuts optimization tools with implicit surface representation to solve the segmentation problem. We will introduce a discrete formulation of the surface evolution problem, prove that the discrete energy function is graph representable and propose how to optimize it using graph cuts. The advantage of this model is two fold: First, Graph cuts are mostly global optimization tools which makes the model very robust and not sensitive to initialization, moreover, the dynamic labeling associated with graph cuts optimization tools makes the model very fast. Second, the implicit representation of the surface makes it robust to topology changes.