title: Smoothness-based forces for deformable models: a long-range force and a corner fitting force.
abstract: Deformable models, originally proposed by Terzopoulos et al. (Artif. Intell. 36 (1988) 91) and Kass et al. (Int. J. Comput. Vision 1 (1988) 321) in 1988, have been widely used in medical image segmentation. However, they manifest two well-known limitations: the lack of an appropriate long-range force to drive the model surface towards the object boundary and poor performance at high curvature boundaries (such as corners) due to the models' intrinsic smoothness constraint. In this paper, a new smoothness force with local control is proposed. The local control is used to devise a long-range force, referred to as the self-zoom force, and a corner fitting force. The self-zoom force enables the model surface to expand and shrink without a limit in range. The corner fitting force propels the model surface to fit high-curvature boundaries. Experiments demonstrate that the model surface is driven to the object boundary by the new forces even if the initial estimate is not close and the object is nonconvex or has a high local curvature.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics, University of Technology, Sydney, P O Box 123, Broadway NSW 2007 Australia. zzhang@proteomesystems.com
authors.forename: Zixin
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Braun
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D007668:Kidney / Q000473:pathology; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008954:Models, Biological; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D013977:Tibia / Q000473:pathology; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods