Segmental Active Contour Model Integrating Region Information for Medical Image Segmentation

A segmental active contour model integrating region information is proposed. Different deformation schemes are used at two stages for segmenting the object correctly in image plain. At the first stage the contour of the model is divided into several segments hierarchically that deform respectively using affine transformation. After the contour is deformed to the approximate boundary of object, a fine match mechanism using statistical information of local region is adopted to make the contour fit the object's boundary exactly. The experimental results indicate that the proposed model is robust to local minima and able to search for concave objects.