Two-Stage Image Segmentation Scheme Based on Inexact Alternating Direction Method

Image segmentation is a fundamental problem in both image processing and computer vision with numerous applications. In this paper, we propose a two-stage image segmentation scheme based on inexact alternating direction method. Specifically, we first solve the convex variant of the Mumford-Shah model to get the smooth solution, and the segmentation is then obtained by applying the K-means clustering method to the solution. Some numerical comparisons are arranged to show the effectiveness of our proposed schemes by segmenting many kinds of images such as artificial images, natural images, and brain MRI images.     

一种改进灰狼优化算法研究及应用

针对灰狼算法易陷入局部最优、收敛精度不高、收敛速度慢等缺点,提出一种改进的灰狼算法.引入莱维飞行,扩大搜索范围,增强全局搜索能力,避免陷入局部最优;引入贪婪原理,提升种群优良性以提高算法收敛精度;引入自适应收敛因子,加快收敛速度;引入动态权重策略,制约全局搜索与局部搜索的相互影响.将改进算法与其他四种算法作对比,实验表明,改进算法在收敛速度与收敛精度上都有更好的性能.最后,应用于图像多阈值分割中,采用GWO-Otsu法可以克服传统Otsu法在多阈值分割时计算量大,实时性差的特点,不但能够取得最优解,且明显缩减计算时间.     

Fast incremental algorithm for speeding up the computation of binarization

Binarization is an important basic operation in image processing community. Based on the thresholded value, the gray image can be segmented into a binary image, usually consisting of background and foreground. Given the histogram of input gray image, based on minimizing the within-variance (or maximizing the between-variance), the Otsu method can obtain a satisfactory binary image. In this paper, we first transfer the within-variance criterion into a new mathematical formulation, which is very suitable to be implemented in a fast incremental way, and it leads to the same thresholded value. Following our proposed incremental computation scheme, an efficient heap- and quantization-based (HQ-based) data structure is presented to realize its implementation. Under eight real gray images, experimental results show that our proposed HQ-based incremental algorithm for binarization has 36% execution-time improvement ratio in average when compared to the Otsu method. Besides this significant speedup, our proposed HQ-based incremental algorithm can also be applied to speed up the Kittler and Illingworth method for binarization.     

基于亮度均衡化的图像阈值分割技术在黄河冰凌监测中的应用

一种基于亮度均衡化的图像阈值分割算法被提出.该算法将冰凌图像亮度数据均衡化,以类间方差最大为标准,求得最佳阈值,并将冰凌图像转化为二值图像,通过冰凌像素统计,最终确定冰凌密度.该算法被应用于黄河河道冰凌图像密度的计算中,取得较好的效果.     

低分辨率医学图像的多图谱分割方法

基于多图谱的图像分割方法因其分割精度高和鲁棒性强,在医学图像分割领域被广泛研究,主要包含图像配准和标签融合两个步骤.目前对多图谱分割方法的研究通常都是在图谱图像和待分割目标图像具有相同分辨率的情况下展开的.然而,由于受图像采集时间,采集设备等影响,临床实践中采集的影像大多是低分辨率数据,使得目前在影像研究中广泛使用的方法无法有效应用于临床实践.因此,针对这一问题,我们结合图像超分辨率恢复方法,提出了精确鲁棒的低分辨率医学图像的多图谱分割方法,实验结果显示提出的方法显著地提高了多图谱分割方法的分割精度.     

A Nash-game approach to joint image restoration and segmentation

We propose a game-theoretic approach to simultaneously restore and segment noisy images. We define two players: one is restoration, with the image intensity as strategy, and the other is segmentation with contours as strategy. Cost functions are the classical relevant ones for restoration and segmentation, respectively. The two players play a static game with complete information, and we consider as solution to the game the so-called Nash equilibrium. For the computation of this equilibrium we present an iterative method with relaxation. The results of numerical experiments performed on some real images show the relevance and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.     

Two-Phase Image Segmentation by Nonconvex Nonsmooth Models with Convergent Alternating Minimization Algorithms

Two-phase image segmentation is a fundamental task to partition an image into foreground and background. In this paper, two types of nonconvex and nonsmooth regularization models are proposed for basic two-phase segmentation. They extend the convex regularization on the characteristic function on the image domain to the nonconvex case, which are able to better obtain piecewise constant regions with neat boundaries. By analyzing the proposed non-Lipschitz model, we combine the proximal alternating minimization framework with support shrinkage and linearization strategies to design our algorithm. This leads to two alternating strongly convex subproblems which can be easily solved. Similarly, we present an algorithm without support shrinkage operation for the nonconvex Lipschitz case. Using the Kurdyka-Łojasiewicz property of the objective function, we prove that the limit point of the generated sequence is a critical point of the original nonconvex nonsmooth problem. Numerical experiments and comparisons illustrate the effectiveness of our method in two-phase image segmentation.     

New normalized nonlocal hybrid level set method for image segmentation

This article introduces a new normalized nonlocal hybrid level set method for image segmentation. Due to intensity overlapping, blurred edges with complex backgrounds, simple intensity and texture information, such kind of image segmentation is still a challenging task. The proposed method uses both the region and boundary information to achieve accurate segmentation results. The region information can help to identify rough region of interest and prevent the boundary leakage problem. It makes use of normalized nonlocal comparisons between pairs of patches in each region, and a heuristic intensity model is proposed to suppress irrelevant strong edges and constrain the segmentation. The boundary information can help to detect the precise location of the target object, it makes use of the geodesic active contour model to obtain the target boundary. The corresponding variational segmentation problem is implemented by a level set formulation. We use an internal energy term for geometric active contours to penalize the deviation of the level set function from a signed distance function. At last, experimental results on synthetic images and real images are shown in the paper with promising results.     

A variational model and its numerical solution for local,selective and automatic segmentation

Variational region-based segmentation models can serve as effective tools for identifying all features and their boundaries in an image. To adapt such models to identify a local feature defined by geometric constraints, re-initializing iterations towards the feature offers a solution in some simple cases but does not in general lead to a reliable solution. This paper presents a dual level set model that is capable of automatically capturing a local feature of some interested region in three dimensions. An additive operator spitting method is developed for accelerating the solution process. Numerical tests show that the proposed model is robust in locally segmenting complex image structures.     

A new stochastic variational PDE model for soft Mumford-Shah segmentation

In this paper, a new stochastic variational PDE model is developed, using instead of hard segmentation soft segmentation. In this way, each pixel is allowed to belong to each image pattern with some probability. Our work proposes a functional with variable exponent, which provides a more accurate model for image segmentation and denoising. The diffusion resulting from the proposed model is a combination between TV-based and isotropic smoothing. The modeling procedure, computational implementation and results are explored in detail and numerical examples of real and synthetic images are presented.     

A New Implicit Method for Surface Segmentation by Minimal Paths in 3D Images

We introduce a novel implicit approach for single-object segmentation in 3D images. The boundary surface of this object is assumed to contain two known curves (the constraining curves), given by an expert. The aim of our method is to find the wanted surface by exploiting as much as possible the information given in the supplied curves and in the image. As for active surfaces, we use a cost potential that penalizes image regions of low interest (most likely areas of low gradient or too far from the surface to be extracted). In order to avoid local minima, we introduce a new partial differential equation and use its solution for segmentation. We show that the zero level set of this solution contains the constraining curves as well as a set of paths joining them. We present a fast implementation that has been successfully applied to 3D medical and synthetic images.     

Adaptive Segmentation Model for Images with Intensity Inhomogeneity based on Local Neighborhood Contrast

Segmentation of images with intensity inhomogeneity is a significant task in the field of image processing, especially in medical image processing and analysis. Some local region-based models work well on handling intensity inhomogeneity, but they are always sensitive to contour initialization and high noise. In this paper, we present an adaptive segmentation model for images with intensity inhomogeneity in the form of partial differential equation. Firstly, a global intensity fitting term and a local intensity fitting term are constructed by employing the global and local image information, respectively. Secondly, a tradeoff function is defined to adjust adaptively the weight between two fitting terms, which is based on the neighborhood contrast of image pixel. Finally, a weighted regularization term related to local entropy is used to ensure the smoothness of evolution curve. Meanwhile, a distance regularization term is added for stable level set evolution. Experimental results show that the proposed model without initial contour can segment inhomogeneous images stably and effectively, which thereby avoiding the influence of contour initialization on segmentation results. Besides, the proposed model works better on noise images comparing with two relevant segmentation models.     

Asymptotics of generalized derangements

An adaptive wavelet-based method is proposed for solving TV(total variation)–Allen–Cahn type models for multi-phase image segmentation. The adaptive algorithm integrates (i) grid adaptation based on a threshold of the sparse wavelet representation of the locally-structured solution; and (ii) effective finite difference on irregular stencils. The compactly supported interpolating-type wavelets enjoy very fast wavelet transforms, and act as a piecewise constant function filter. These lead to fairly sparse computational grids, and relax the stiffness of the nonlinear PDEs. Equipped with this algorithm, the proposed sharp interface model becomes very effective for multi-phase image segmentation. This method is also applied to image restoration and similar advantages are observed.     

A fast and efficient mesh segmentation method based on improved region growing

Mesh segmentation is one of the important issues in digital geometry processing. Region growing method has been proven to be a efficient method for 3D mesh segmentation. However, in mesh segmentation, feature line extraction algorithm is computationally costly, and the over-segmentation problem still exists during region merging processing. In order to tackle these problems, a fast and efficient mesh segmentation method based on improved region growing is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the dihedral angle of each non-boundary edge is defined and computed simply, then the sharp edges are detected and feature lines are extracted. After region growing process is finished, an improved region merging method will be performed in two steps by considering some geometric criteria. The experiment results show the feature line extraction algorithm can obtain the same geometric information fast with less computational costs and the improved region merging method can solve over-segmentation well.     

Robust Contour Tracking Model Using a Variational Level-Set Algorithm

In this work, we provide a novel variational level-set based object contour tracking approach. Thus, a mathematically rigorous variant of the Chan-Vese algorithm for image segmentation via geometric active contour model is proposed here. With respect to the original contour detection algorithm, the level set function ?(t) defining the evolving contour S _t  = {x; ?(t, x) = 0} is iteratively computed from a nonlinear parabolic boundary value problem that is well posed in the space of functions with bounded variations. We provide a robust mathematical justification of the proposed level-set model.     

Structure preserving quaternion full orthogonalization method with applications

This article proposes a structure-preserving quaternion full orthogonalization method (QFOM) for solving quaternion linear systems arising from color image restoration. The method is based on the quaternion Arnoldi procedure preserving the quaternion Hessenberg form. Combining with the preconditioning techniques, we further derive a variant of the QFOM for solving the linear systems, which can greatly improve the rate of convergence of QFOM. Numerical experiments on randomly generated data and color image restoration problems illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms in comparison with some existing methods.     

Recent advances of variational model in medical imaging and applications to computer aided surgery

In this paper, we review some mathematical models in medical image processing. Due to the superiority in modeling and computation, variational methods have been proven to be powerful techniques, which have been extremely popular and dramatically improved in the past two decades. On one hand, many models have been proposed for nearly all kinds of applications. On the other hand, a lot of models can be globally optimized and also many computation tools have been introduced. Under the variational framework, we focus on two basic problems in medical imaging: image restoration and segmentation, which are core components for kinds of specific tasks. For image restoration, we discuss some models on both additive and multiplicative noises. For image segmentation, we review some models on both whole image segmentation and specific target delineation, with the later being a key step in computer aided surgery. Additionally, we present some models on liver delineation and give their applications to living donor liver transplantation.     

Continuous optimization by a variant of simulated annealing

A variant of the simulated annealing algorithm, based on the generalized method of Bohachevsky et al., is proposed for continuous optimization problems. The algorithm automatically adjusts the step sizes to reflect the local slopes and function values, and it controls the random directions to point favorably toward potential improvements. Computational results on some well known functions show substantial improvements both in solution quality and efficiency.     

Segmentation of color lip images by optimal thresholding using bacterial foraging optimization (BFO)

Image segmentation is required as a very important and fundamental operation for significant analysis and interpretation of images. One of the most important applications of segmentation is for facial surgical planning. Thresholding method is so common in image segmentation, because it is simple, noise robustness and accurate. In this paper, we recognize and segment the area of lips using optimal thresholding based on bacterial foraging optimization. New color space (IHLS) is introduced in this paper, that it has good performance in facial image segmentation. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, we use three methods to measure accuracy. The proposed algorithm has less computational complexity and error and it is also efficient.     

A class of quasi-linear elliptic systems arising in image segmentation

We study a quasi-linear system arising in image segmentation in order to determine the minimum of the Mumford-Shah functional. We prove the existence of a solution for a larger class of systems including the previous one. The recursive method used in the proof produces as well an efficient algorithm that can be easily implemented in connection for example with finite element techniques. Results of some numerical experiments are also discussed. Received June 30, 1997