A Retinex modulated piecewise constant variational model for image segmentation and bias correction

In this paper, we propose a novel Retinex induced piecewise constant variational model for simultaneous segmentation of images with intensity inhomogeneity and bias correction. Firstly, we obtain an additive model by decomposing the original image into a smooth bias component and a structure part based on the Retinex theory. Secondly, the structure part can be modeled by the piecewise constant variational model and thus deduced a new data fidelity term. Finally, we formulate a new energy functional by incorporating the data fidelity term into the level set framework and introducing a GL-regularizer to the level set function and a smooth regularizer to model the bias component. Based on the alternating minimization algorithm and the operator splitting method, we present a numerical scheme to solve the minimization problem efficiently. Experimental results on images from diverse modalities demonstrate the competitive performances of the proposed model and algorithm over other representative methods in term of efficiency and robustness.     

A fractional order derivative based active contour model for inhomogeneous image segmentation

Segmenting intensity inhomogeneous images is a challenging task for both local and global methods. Some hybrid methods have great advantages over the traditional methods in inhomogeneous image segmentation. In this paper, a new hybrid method is presented, which incorporates image gradient, local environment and global information into a framework, called adaptive-weighting active contour model. The energy or level set functions in the framework mainly include two parts: a global term and local term. The global term aims to enhance the image contrast, and it can also accelerate the convergence rate when minimizing the energy function. The local term integrates fractional order differentiation, fractional order gradient magnitude, and difference image information into the well-known local Chan–Vese model, which has been shown to be effective and efficient in modeling the local information. The local term can also enhance low frequency information and improve the inhomogeneous image segmentation. An adaptive weighting strategy is proposed to balance the actions of the global and local terms automatically. When minimizing the level set functions, regularization can be imposed by applying Gaussian filtering to ensure smoothness in the evolution process. In addition, a corresponding stopping criterion is proposed to ensure the evolving curve automatically stops on true boundaries of objects. Dice similarity coefficient is employed as the comparative quantitative measures for the segmented results. Experiments on synthetic images as well as real images are performed to demonstrate the segmentation accuracy and computational efficiency of the presented hybrid method.     

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 formulation for physical noised image segmentation

Image segmentation is a hot topic in image science. In this paper we present a new variational segmentation model based on the theory of Mumford-Shah model. The aim of our model is to divide noised image, according to a certain criterion, into homogeneous and smooth regions that should correspond to structural units in the scene or objects of interest. The proposed region-based model uses total variation as a regularization term, and different fidelity term can be used for image segmentation in the cases of physical noise, such as Gaussian, Poisson and multiplicative speckle noise. Our model consists of five weighted terms, two of them are responsible for image denoising based on fidelity term and total variation term, the others assure that the three conditions of adherence to the data, smoothing, and discontinuity detection are met at once. We also develop a primal-dual hybrid gradient algorithm for our model. Numerical results on various synthetic and real images are provided to compare our method with others,these results show that our proposed model and algorithms are effective.     

A variational approach for restoring images corrupted by noisy blur kernels and additive noise

In this paper, we study a deblurring algorithm for distorted images by random impulse response. We propose and develop a convex optimization model to recover the underlying image and the blurring function simultaneously. The objective function is composed of 3 terms: the data‐fitting term between the observed image and the product of the estimated blurring function and the estimated image, the squared difference between the estimated blurring function and its mean, and the total variation regularization term for the estimated image. We theoretically show that under some mild conditions, the resulting objective function can be convex in which the global minimum value is unique. The numerical results confirm that the peak‐to‐signal‐noise‐ratio and structural similarity of the restored images by the proposed algorithm are the best when the proposed objective function is convex. We also present a proximal alternating minimization scheme to solve the resulting minimization problem. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model and the efficiency of the numerical scheme.     

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.     

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.     

Image segmentation by level set evolution with region consistency constraint

Image segmentation is a key and fundamental problem in image processing, computer graphics, and computer vision. Level set based method for image segmentation is used widely for its topology flexibility and proper mathematical formulation. However, poor performance of existing level set models on noisy images and weak boundary limit its application in image segmentation. In this paper, we present a region consistency constraint term to measure the regional consistency on both sides of the boundary, this term defines the boundary of the image within a range, and hence increases the stability of the level set model. The term can make existing level set models significantly improve the efficiency of the algorithms on segmenting images with noise and weak boundary. Furthermore, this constraint term can make edge-based level set model overcome the defect of sensitivity to the initial contour. The experimental results show that our algorithm is efficient for image segmentation and outperform the existing state-of-art methods regarding images with noise and weak boundary.     

Parallelizable and robust image segmentation model based on the shape prior information

Image segmentation is an important task in many fields, and there are plentiful models based on region or edges. Nowadays, the speed of calculation and the universal applicability of the model attract much attention. To some extent, the traditional energy model can segment images suffering from intensity inhomogeneity while it relies on initialization seriously. In this paper, we present a new model that consists of an arbitrary active contour model and proposed shape priori information term, which can segment various images accurately and provide an opportunity to carry on parallelizable calculation. The shape priori information term plays a key role in our energy functional and the shape priori information can be chosen diversely. This term also improves the robustness of our model including initial conditions and parameter adjustment. Besides, the split Bregman method is then applied to minimize the energy functional. Multiple experimental results and comparisons are shown to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed model. Firstly, fuzzy clustering, threshold and manual operation are used to be the shape priori information. Secondly, it is illustrated that our model is not sensitive to parameters and initial contours. Computation time and accuracy are also obviously improved when using the parallel algorithm.     

Existence and regularity of minimizers of a functional for unsupervised multiphase segmentation

We consider a variational model for image segmentation proposed in Sandberg et al. (2010) [12]. In such a model the image domain is partitioned into a finite collection of subsets denoted as phases. The segmentation is unsupervised, i.e., the model finds automatically an optimal number of phases, which are not required to be connected subsets. Unsupervised segmentation is obtained by minimizing a functional of the Mumford–Shah type (Mumford and Shah, 1989 [1]), but modifying the geometric part of the Mumford–Shah energy with the introduction of a suitable scale term. The results of computer experiments discussed in [12] show that the resulting variational model has several properties which are relevant for applications. In this paper we investigate the theoretical properties of the model. We study the existence of minimizers of the corresponding functional, first looking for a weak solution in a class of phases constituted by sets of finite perimeter. Then we find various regularity properties of such minimizers, particularly we study the structure of triple junctions by determining their optimal angles.     

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.     

基于Huber正则化的红外与可见光图像融合

图像融合通常是指从多源信道采集同一目标图像,将互补的多焦点、多模态、多时相和/或多视点图像集成在一起,形成新图像的过程.在本文中,我们采用基于Huber正则化的红外与可见光图像的融合模型.该模型通过约束融合图像与红外图像相似的像素强度保持热辐射信息,以及约束融合图像与可见光图像相似的灰度梯度和像素强度保持图像的边缘和纹理等外观信息,同时能够改善图像灰度梯度相对较小区域的阶梯效应.为了最小化这种变分模型,我们结合增广拉格朗日方法(ALM)和量身定做有限点方法(TFPM)的思想设计数值算法,并给出了算法的收敛性分析.最后,我们将所提模型和算法与其他七种图像融合方法进行定性和定量的比较,分析了本文所提模型的特点和所提数值算法的有效性.     

求解分段常数图象分割模型的一个快速算法

针对Xue-ChengTai等提出的分段常数图象分割模型,我们提出了一个新的快速求解算法。通过引进一个函数来选择模型中的正则化参数β的值,并判断在迭代过程中何时求解不含惩罚项的泛函F。此函数的引入有效地加速了算法的收敛速度。结合原始-对偶Newton方法来求解总变差最小化问题。数值试验表明新算法具有很快的收敛速度与良好的分割效果,且算法对初始值的要求不高。     

A geometric flow approach for region-based image segmentation-theoretical analysis

In this paper, we analyze the well-posedness of an image segmentation model. The main idea of that segmentation model is to minimize one energy functional by evolving a given piecewise constant image towards the image to be segmented. The evolution is controlled by a serial of mappings, which can be represented by B-spline basis functions. The evolution terminates when the energy is below a given threshold. We prove that the correspondence between two images in the segmentation model is an injective and surjective mapping under appropriate conditions. We further prove that the solution of the segmentation model exists using the direct method in the calculus of variations. These results provide the theoretical support for that segmentation model.     

A hybrid convex variational model for image restoration

We propose a new hybrid model for variational image restoration using an alternative diffusion switching non-quadratic function with a parameter. The parameter is chosen adaptively so as to minimize the smoothing near the edges and allow the diffusion to smooth away from the edges. This model belongs to a class of edge-preserving regularization methods proposed in the past, the ?-function formulation. This involves a minimizer to the associated energy functional. We study the existence and uniqueness of the energy functional of the model. Using real and synthetic images we show that the model is effective in image restoration.     

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-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.     

An approximation of the Mumford–Shah energy by a family of discrete edge-preserving functionals

We show the Γ$\Gamma$-convergence of a family of discrete functionals to the Mumford and Shah image segmentation functional. The functionals of the family are constructed by modifying the elliptic approximating functionals proposed by Ambrosio and Tortorelli. The quadratic term of the energy related to the edges of the segmentation is replaced by a nonconvex functional.     

Split Bregman method for minimization of improved active contour model combining local and global information dynamically

This paper presents an improved active contour model by combining the Chan–Vese model, the region-scalable fitting energy model, the globally convex segmentation method and the split Bregman method. A weight function that varies with the location of a given image is used to control the influence of the local and global information dynamically. We first present our model in a 2-phase level set formulation and then extend it to a multi-phase formulation. By taking the local and global information into consideration together, our model can segment more general images, especially images with intensity inhomogeneity. Our model has been applied to synthetic and real images with promising results. Numerical results show the advantages of our model compared with other models. The accuracy and efficiency are demonstrated by the numerical results. Besides, our model is robust in the presence of noise.     

基于直方图初始化的有效的多区域Mumford-Shah图像分割方法（英文）

The Mumford-Shah energy functional is a successful image segmentation model. It is a non-convex variational problem and lacks of good initialization techniques so far. In this paper, motivated by the fact that image histogram is a combination of several Gaussian distributions, and their centers can be considered as approximations of cluster centers, we introduce a histogram-based initialization method to compute the cluster centers. With this technique, we then devise an effective multi-region Mumford-Shah image segmentation method, and adopt the recent proximal alternating minimization method to solve the minimization problem. Experiments indicate that our histogram initialization method is more robust than existing methods,and our segmentation method is very effective for both gray and color images.