Splitting and Merging for Active Contours: Plug-and-Play

Mojtaba Lashgari, Abhirup Banerjee () and Hossein Rabbani
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Mojtaba Lashgari: Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7DQ, UK
Abhirup Banerjee: Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7DQ, UK
Hossein Rabbani: Medical Image and Signal Processing Research Centre, School of Advanced Technologies in Medicine, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan 81746-73461, Iran

Mathematics, 2025, vol. 13, issue 6, 1-22

Abstract: This study tackles the challenge of splitting and merging in parametric active contours or snakes. The proposed method comprises three stages: (1) fully 4-connected interpolation, (2) snake splitting, and (3) snakes merging. For this purpose, first, the coordinates of snake points are separated into two corrupted 1D signals, with missing X/Y samples in the signals representing missing snakes’ coordinates. These missing X/Y samples are estimated using a constrained Tikhonov regularisation model, ensuring fully 4-connected snakes. Next, crossing points are identified by plotting snake points onto a raster matrix, detecting overlaps where multiple snake points occupy the same raster cell. Finally, snakes are split or merged by extracting snake points between crossing snake points that form a loop using a heuristic approach. Experimental results on the boundary detection of enamel in Micro-CT images and coronary arteries’ lumen in CT images demonstrate the proposed method’s ability to handle contour splitting and merging effectively.

Keywords: active contour; merging; regularisation; snake; splitting; Tikhonov regularisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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