title: Convolutional virtual electric field for image segmentation using active contours.
abstract: Gradient vector flow (GVF) is an effective external force for active contours; however, it suffers from heavy computation load. The virtual electric field (VEF) model, which can be implemented in real time using fast Fourier transform (FFT), has been proposed later as a remedy for the GVF model. In this work, we present an extension of the VEF model, which is referred to as CONvolutional Virtual Electric Field, CONVEF for short. This proposed CONVEF model takes the VEF model as a convolution operation and employs a modified distance in the convolution kernel. The CONVEF model is also closely related to the vector field convolution (VFC) model. Compared with the GVF, VEF and VFC models, the CONVEF model possesses not only some desirable properties of these models, such as enlarged capture range, u-shape concavity convergence, subject contour convergence and initialization insensitivity, but also some other interesting properties such as G-shape concavity convergence, neighboring objects separation, and noise suppression and simultaneously weak edge preserving. Meanwhile, the CONVEF model can also be implemented in real-time by using FFT. Experimental results illustrate these advantages of the CONVEF model on both synthetic and natural images.
authors.affiliation: School of Computer Science, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, China.
authors.forename: Yuanquan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Electronic Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Ce
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: School of Software Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
authors.forename: Jiawan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: School of Computer Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Yuden
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jian
mesh_terms: D004560:Electricity; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008168:Lung / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D059629:Signal-To-Noise Ratio; D013997:Time Factors; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed; D014584:User-Computer Interface