Segmentation of Images on Polar Coordinate Meshes

The Chan-Vese level set algorithm has been successfully applied to segmentation of images on Cartesian coordinate meshes, including ordinary planar images. In this paper we present a Chan-Vese model for segmentation of images on polar coordinate meshes, such as topography and remote sensing images. The image segmentation is accomplished by formulating the associated evolution equation in the polar coordinate system and then numerically solving the partial differential equation on an overset grid system called the Yin-Yang grid, which is free from the problem of singularity at the poles. We include examples of segmentations of real earth data that demonstrate the performance of our method.