Fuzzy active contour model

Höwing, Frank; Dooley, Laurence S. and Wermser, Diederich (2000). Fuzzy active contour model. IEE Proceedings Vision, Image & Signal Processing, 147(4) pp. 323–330.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1049/ip-vis:20000326

URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumb...

Abstract

A new method for representing and tracking of object boundaries is presented, which allows for the integration of uncertain a priori knowledge into an active contour model. The novel concept of fuzzy snakes is developed to allow for an intuitive specification of the properties of an object's boundary. This is achieved by introducing fuzzy energy functions and establishing a linguistic rule base, which describes each of the fuzzy snake's segments. Furthermore the approximate length of each contour segment may be specified to both improve the segmentation process and to reduce computational complexity. Experimental results demonstrate the validity of the theoretical properties of the fuzzy snake approach, and examples have been included illustrating the application of the technique to complex scenes, such as medical imaging sequences.