Distance Regularized Level Set Evolution and Its Application to Image Segmentation

Level set methods have been widely used in image processing and computer vision. In conventional level set formulations, the level set function typically develops irregularities during its evolution, which may cause numerical errors and eventually destroy the stability of the evolution. Therefore, a numerical remedy, called reinitialization, is typically applied to periodically replace the degraded level set function with a signed distance function. However, the practice of reinitialization not only raises serious problems as when and how it should be performed, but also affects numerical accuracy in an undesirable way. This paper proposes a new variational level set formulation in which the regularity of the level set function is intrinsically maintained during the level set evolution. The level set evolution is derived as the gradient flow that minimizes an energy functional with a distance regularization term and an external energy that drives the motion of the zero level set toward...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TIP
• Authors: Chunming Li, Chenyang Xu, Changfeng Gui, Martin D. Fox
• Keywords: Distance Regularization, Distance Regularization Term, Education, Numerical, TIP 2010