Using shapes correlation for active contour segmentation of uterine fibroid ultrasound images in computer-aided therapy

Segmenting the lesion regions from the ultrasound （US） images is an important step in the intra-operative planning of some computer-aided therapies. High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound （HIFU）, as a popular computer-aided therapy, has been widely used in the treatment of uterine fibroids. However, such segmentation in HIFU remains challenge for two reasons： （1） the blurry or missing boundaries of lesion regions in the HIFU images and （2） the deformation of uterine fibroids caused by the patient＇s breathing or an external force during the US imaging process, which can lead to complex shapes of lesion regions. These factors have prevented classical active contour-based segmentation methods from yielding desired results for uterine fibroids in US images. In this paper, a novel active contour-based segmentation method is proposed, which utilizes the correlation information of target shapes among a sequence of images as prior knowledge to aid the existing active contour method. This prior knowledge can be interpreted as a unsupervised clustering of shapes prior modeling. Meanwhile, it is also proved that the shapes correlation has the low-rank property in a linear space, and the theory of matrix recovery is used as an effective tool to impose the proposed prior on an existing active contour model. Finally, an accurate method is developed to solve the proposed model by using the Augmented Lagrange Multiplier （ALM）. Experimental results from both synthetic and clinical uterine fibroids US image sequences demonstrate that the proposed method can consistently improve the performance of active contour models and increase the robustness against missing or misleading boundaries, and can greatly improve the efficiency of HIFU therapy.

Batch Active Learning for Multispectral and Hyperspectral Image Segmentation Using Similarity Graphs

Graph learning,when used as a semi-supervised learning(SSL)method,performs well for classification tasks with a low label rate.We provide a graph-based batch active learning pipeline for pixel/patch neighborhood multi-or hyperspectral image segmentation.Our batch active learning approach selects a collection of unlabeled pixels that satisfy a graph local maximum constraint for the active learning acquisition function that determines the relative importance of each pixel to the classification.This work builds on recent advances in the design of novel active learning acquisition functions(e.g.,the Model Change approach in arXiv:2110.07739)while adding important further developments including patch-neighborhood image analysis and batch active learning methods to further increase the accuracy and greatly increase the computational efficiency of these methods.In addition to improvements in the accuracy,our approach can greatly reduce the number of labeled pixels needed to achieve the same level of the accuracy based on randomly selected labeled pixels.

Geometric active contour based approach for segmentation of high-resolution spaceborne SAR images

Segmentation is the key step in auto-interpretation of high-resolution spaceborne synthetic aperture radar（SAR） images. A novel method is proposed based on integrating the geometric active contour（GAC） and the support vector machine（SVM）models. First, the images are segmented by using SVM and textural statistics. A likelihood measurement for every pixel is derived by using the initial segmentation. The Chan-Vese model then is modified by adding two items： the likelihood and the distance between the initial segmentation and the evolving contour. Experimental results using real SAR images demonstrate the good performance of the proposed method compared to several classic GAC models.

Investigation of image segmentation effect on the accuracy of reconstructed digital core models of coquina carbonate

Digital core models reconstructed using X-ray tomography(X-CT)enable the quantitative characterization of the pore structure in three dimensions(3D)and the numerical simulation of petrophysics.When the X-CT images accurately reflect the micro structures of core samples,the greyscale threshold in the image segmentation determines the accuracy of digital cores and the simulated petrophysical properties.Therefore,it is vital to investigate the comparison parameter for determining the key greyscale threshold and the criterion to describe the accuracy of the segmentation.Representative coquina digital core models from X-CT are used in this work to study the impact of grayscale threshold on the porosity,pore percolation,connectivity and electrical resistivity of the pore scale model and these simulations are calculated by Minkowski functions,component labeling and fi nite element method,respectively,to quantify the pore structure and simulate electrical resistivity.Results showed that the simulated physical properties of the digital cores,varied with the gradual increase of the greyscale threshold.Among the four parameters related to the threshold,the porosity was most sensitive and chose as the comparison parameter to judge the accuracy of the greyscale threshold.The variations of the threshold change the micro pore structures,and then the electrical resistivity.When the porosity of the digital core model is close to the experimental porosity,the simulated porosity exponent matches the experimental porosity exponents well.The good agreement proved that the porosity is the critical comparison parameter to describe the accuracy of image segmentation.The criterion is that the porosity of the digital core after segmentation should be close to the experimental porosity.

Automatic segmentation of Colon Cancer Cells Based on Active Contour Method： A New Approach

Automatic interpretation of the images of colon cell biopsies requires automatic segmentation of these cells in the image obtained. The active contour method for image segmentation is a well known method for automatic detection of the cell contour. However, the application of this method on colon cell images was not effective. In this paper, the authors have proposed a new technique to reduce the analysis time needed to detect cells in a given image. This technique is based on the active contour method but now using a progressive division of the dimensions of the image to achieve convergence. The model proposed succeeded in detecting cells whose boundaries are not necessarily defined by a gradient. The initial curve can be anywhere in the image, and interior contours can be automatically detected. The developed algorithm was successfully applied on textured multispectral images of three types of cells, including benign hyperplasia （BH）, intraepithelial neoplasia （IN）, and carcinoma （Ca） cells.

Liver Hydatid CT Image Segmentation Using Smoothed Bayesian Classification Method and Modified Parametric Active Contour Model

Liver hydatid disease is a common parasitic disease in farm and pastoral areas, which seriously influences people's health. Based on CT imaging features of this disease, an iterative approach for liver segmentation and hydatid lesion extraction simultaneously is proposed. In each iteration, our algorithm consists of two main steps: 1) according to the user-defined pixel seeds in the liver and hydatid lesion, Gaussian probability model fitting and smoothed Bayesian classification are applied to get initial segmentation of liver and lesion; 2) the parametric active contour model using priori shape force field is adopted to refine initial segmentation. We make subjective and objective evaluation on the proposed algorithm validity by the experiments of liver and hydatid lesion segmentation on different patients' CT slices. In comparison with ground-truth manual segmentation results, the experimental results show the effectiveness of our method to segment liver and hydatid lesion.

The Method of Flotation Froth Image Segmentation Based on Threshold Level Set

A novel flotation froth image segmentation based on threshold level set method is put forward in view of the problem of over-segmentation and under-segmentation which occurs when the existing method segmented the flotation froth images. Firstly, the proposed method adopts histogram equalization to improve the contrast of the image, and then chooses the upper threshold and lower threshold from grey value of histogram of the image equalization, and complete image segmentation using the level set method. In this paper, the model which integrates edge with region level set model is utilized, and the speed energy term is introduced to segment the target. Experimental results show that the proposed method has better segmentation results and higher segmentation efficiency on the images with under-segmentation and incorrect segmentation, and it is meaningful for ore dressing industrial.

Fully Automatic Segmentation of Gynaecological Abnormality Using a New Viola–Jones Model

One of the most complex tasks for computer-aided diagnosis(Intelligent decision support system)is the segmentation of lesions.Thus,this study proposes a new fully automated method for the segmentation of ovarian and breast ultrasound images.The main contributions of this research is the development of a novel Viola–James model capable of segmenting the ultrasound images of breast and ovarian cancer cases.In addition,proposed an approach that can efficiently generate region-of-interest(ROI)and new features that can be used in characterizing lesion boundaries.This study uses two databases in training and testing the proposed segmentation approach.The breast cancer database contains 250 images,while that of the ovarian tumor has 100 images obtained from several hospitals in Iraq.Results of the experiments showed that the proposed approach demonstrates better performance compared with those of other segmentation methods used for segmenting breast and ovarian ultrasound images.The segmentation result of the proposed system compared with the other existing techniques in the breast cancer data set was 78.8%.By contrast,the segmentation result of the proposed system in the ovarian tumor data set was 79.2%.In the classification results,we achieved 95.43%accuracy,92.20%sensitivity,and 97.5%specificity when we used the breast cancer data set.For the ovarian tumor data set,we achieved 94.84%accuracy,96.96%sensitivity,and 90.32%specificity.

Automatic Tracing and Segmentation of Rat Mammary Fat Pads in MRI Image Sequences Based on Cartoon-Texture Model

The growth patterns of mammary fat pads and glandular tissues inside the fat pads may be related with the risk factors of breast cancer.Quantitative measurements of this relationship are available after segmentation of mammary pads and glandular tissues.Rat fat pads may lose continuity along image sequences or adjoin similar intensity areas like epidermis and subcutaneous regions.A new approach for automatic tracing and segmentation of fat pads in magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) image sequences is presented,which does not require that the number of pads be constant or the spatial location of pads be adjacent among image slices.First,each image is decomposed into cartoon image and texture image based on cartoon-texture model.They will be used as smooth image and feature image for segmentation and for targeting pad seeds,respectively.Then,two-phase direct energy segmentation based on Chan-Vese active contour model is applied to partitioning the cartoon image into a set of regions,from which the pad boundary is traced iteratively from the pad seed.A tracing algorithm based on scanning order is proposed to accurately trace the pad boundary,which effectively removes the epidermis attached to the pad without any post processing as well as solves the problem of over-segmentation of some small holes inside the pad.The experimental results demonstrate the utility of this approach in accurate delineation of various numbers of mammary pads from several sets of MRI images.

Fast Image Segmentation Based on a Two-Stage Geometrical Active Contour

A fast two-stage geometric active contour algorithm for image segmentation is developed. First, the Eikonal equation problem is quickly solved using an improved fast sweeping method, and a criterion of local minimum of area gradient (LMAG) is presented to extract the optimal arrival time. Then, the final time function is passed as an initial state to an area and length minimizing flow model, which adjusts the interface more accurately and prevents it from leaking. For object with complete and salient edge, using the first stage only is able to obtain an ideal result, and this results in a time complexity of O(M), where M is the number of points in each coordinate direction. Both stages are needed for convoluted shapes, but the computation cost can be drastically reduced. Efficiency of the algorithm is verified in segmentation experiments of real images with different feature.

Centerline Extraction for Image Segmentation Using Gradient and Direction Vector Flow Active Contours

In this paper, we propose a fast centerline extraction method to be used for gradient and direction vector flow of active contours. The gradient and direction vector flow is a recently reported active contour model capable of significantly improving the image segmentation performance especially for complex object shape, by seamlessly integrating gradient vector flow and prior directional information. Since the prior directional information is provided by manual line drawing, it can be inconvenient for inexperienced users who might have difficulty in finding the best place to draw the directional lines to achieve the best segmentation performance. This paper describes a method to overcome this problem by automatically extracting centerlines to guide the users for providing the right directional information. Experimental results on synthetic and real images demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.

Novel Active Contour Model for Image Segmentation Based on Local Fuzzy Gaussian Distribution Fitting

A novel active contour model is proposed, which incorporates local information distributions in a fuzzy energy function to effectively deal with the intensity inhomogeneity. Moreover, the proposed model is convex with respect to the variable which is used for extracting the contour. This makes the model independent on the initial condition and suitable for an automatic segmentation. Furthermore, the energy function is minimized in a computationally efficient way by calculating the fuzzy energy alterations directly. Experiments are carried out to prove the performance of the proposed model over some existing methods. The obtained results confirm the efficiency of the method.

Medical ultrasound image segmentation using genetic active contour

Image segmentation is one of the earliest and most important stages of image processing and plays an important role in both qualitative and quantitative analysis of medical ultrasound images but ultrasound images have low level of contrast and are corrupted with strong speckle noise. Due to these effects, segmentation of ultrasound images is very challenging and traditional image segmentation methods may not be leads to satisfactory results. The active contour method has been one of the widely used techniques for image segmentation;however, due to low quality of ultrasound images, it has encountered difficulties. In this paper, we presented a segmental method combined genetic algorithm and active contour with an energy minimization procedure based on genetic algorithms. This method have been proposed to overcome some limits of classical active contours, as con-tour initialization and local minima (speckle noise), and have been successfully applied on medical ultrasound images. Experimental result on medical ultrasound image show that our presented method only can correctly segment the circular tissue’s on ultra-sound images.

Hybrid Active Contour Mammographic Mass Segmentation and Classification

This research implements a novel segmentation of mammographic mass.Three methods are proposed,namely,segmentation of mass based on iterative active contour,automatic region growing,and fully automatic mask selectionbased active contour techniques.In the first method,iterative threshold is performed for manual cropped preprocessed image,and active contour is applied thereafter.To overcome manual cropping in the second method,an automatic seed selection followed by region growing is performed.Given that the result is only a few images owing to over segmentation,the third method uses a fully automatic active contour.Results of the segmentation techniques are compared with the manual markup by experts,specifically by taking the difference in their mean values.Accordingly,the difference in the mean value of the third method is 1.0853,which indicates the closeness of the segmentation.Moreover,the proposed method is compared with the existing fuzzy C means and level set methods.The automatic mass segmentation based on active contour technique results in segmentation with high accuracy.By using adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system,classification is done and results in a sensitivity of 94.73%,accuracy of 93.93%,and Mathew’s correlation coefficient(MCC)of 0.876.

Cell Segmentation and Tracking in Microfluidic Platform

In this research, we have concentrated on trajectory extraction based on image segmentation and data association in order to provide an economic and complete solution for rapid microfluidic cell migration experiments. We applied region scalable active contour model to segment the individual cells and then employed the ellipse fitting technique to process touching cells. Subsequently, we have also introduced a topology based technique to associate the cells between consecutive frames. This scheme achieves satisfactory segmentation and tracking results on the datasets acquired by our microfluidic platform.

基于扩展型活性膜系统的彩色图像分割方法

为克服优化算法易陷入局部最优和收敛速度慢的局限,提高扩展膜系统在图像处理领域的优化性能,提出一种基于扩展型活性膜系统(P system)的改进北方苍鹰优化(improved northern goshawk optimization,INGO)算法——PINGO.采用北方苍鹰优化算法作为基本膜中的进化规则,通过更新苍鹰的状态进化基本膜中的对象,将INGO算法作为局部进化规则来进化子膜中的对象.该系统根据活性膜自身的特点在基本膜中溶解或产生子膜,通信规则用于实现不同膜之间的信息交换与共享,避免算法陷入局部最优.在数据集BSD300和BSD500上,分别采用海鸥优化(seagull optimization algorithm,SOA)算法、灰狼优化(grey wolf optimizer,GWO)算法、INGO算法和PINGO算法,对不同优化阈值个数的图像进行分割.结果表明,PINGO算法在分割后的图像上的峰值信噪比均优于其他算法,特征相似度最优值也占了83%,在保持色彩与纹理的同时提高了分割的准确性.研究结果表明了所提彩色图像分割方法的有效性.

Projection registration of X-ray image and CT image

A methodology for alignment of an X-ray image and a CT image, based on the Chamfer 3-4 distance transform and simulated annealing optimization algorithm is presented. Firstly, an initial transformation matrix is constructed. For the convenience of computing, geometric models of the X-ray device to reconstruct the calibration matrix are used. Then, by defining the distance between the 3-D protective and the 2-D object image, we optimize this distance matching problem, using the simulated annealing algorithm. This method is also integrated into medical intra-operation, dealing with the data set acquired from 3-D image workstation and active navigation.

Simulated annealing spectral clustering algorithm for image segmentation

The similarity measure is crucial to the performance of spectral clustering. The Gaussian kernel function based on the Euclidean distance is usual y adopted as the similarity measure. However, the Euclidean distance measure cannot ful y reveal the complex distribution data, and the result of spectral clustering is very sensitive to the scaling parameter. To solve these problems, a new manifold distance measure and a novel simulated anneal-ing spectral clustering （SASC） algorithm based on the manifold distance measure are proposed. The simulated annealing based on genetic algorithm （SAGA）, characterized by its rapid convergence to the global optimum, is used to cluster the sample points in the spectral mapping space. The proposed algorithm can not only reflect local and global consistency better, but also reduce the sensitivity of spectral clustering to the kernel parameter, which improves the algorithm’s clustering performance. To efficiently apply the algorithm to image segmentation, the Nystrom method is used to reduce the computation complexity. Experimental results show that compared with traditional clustering algorithms and those popular spectral clustering algorithms, the proposed algorithm can achieve better clustering performances on several synthetic datasets, texture images and real images.

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 distribution prior model for airplane segmentation without exact template

In many practical applications of image segmentation problems,employing prior information can greatly improve segmentation results.This paper continues to study one kind of prior information,called prior distribution.Within this research,there is no exact template of the object;instead only several samples are given.The proposed method,called the parametric distribution prior model,extends our previous model by adding the training procedure to learn the prior distribution of the objects.Then this paper establishes the energy function of the active contour model(ACM)with consideration of this parametric form of prior distribution.Therefore,during the process of segmenting,the template can update itself while the contour evolves.Experiments are performed on the airplane data set.Experimental results demonstrate the potential of the proposed method that with the information of prior distribution,the segmentation effect and speed can be both improved efficaciously.