Minimal paths and deformable models for image analysis

We present an overview of part of our work on minimal paths. Introduced first in order to find the global minimum of active contours' energy using Fast Marching [18], we have then used minimal paths for finding multiple contours for contour completion from points, curves or regions in 2D or 3D images. Some variations allow to decrease computation time, make easier initialization and centering a path in a tubular structure. Fast Marching is also an efficient way to solve balloon model evolution using level sets. We show applications like for road and vessel segmentation and for virtual endoscopy.Nous présentons une synthèse d'une partie de nos travaux sur les chemins minimaux. Introduits au départ pour trouver le minimum global de l'énergie pour les contours actifs à l'aide du Fast Marching [18], nous les avons utilisés par la suite pour la recherche de contours multiples pour compléter des points, des courbes ou des régions dans des images 2D et 3D. Plusieurs variantes permettent d'améliorer le temps de calcul, de simplifier l'initialisation ou de centrer le chemin dans une structure tubulaire. Le Fast Marching est aussi un moyen efficace de résoudre l'évolution d'un modèle de contour actif ballon par "level sets". Nous montrons des applications notamment pour la segmentation de routes et vaisseaux et pour l'endoscopie virtuelle

Volume-Enclosing Surface Extraction

In this paper we present a new method, which allows for the construction of triangular isosurfaces from three-dimensional data sets, such as 3D image data and/or numerical simulation data that are based on regularly shaped, cubic lattices. This novel volume-enclosing surface extraction technique, which has been named VESTA, can produce up to six different results due to the nature of the discretized 3D space under consideration. VESTA is neither template-based nor it is necessarily required to operate on 2x2x2 voxel cell neighborhoods only. The surface tiles are determined with a very fast and robust construction technique while potential ambiguities are detected and resolved. Here, we provide an in-depth comparison between VESTA and various versions of the well-known and very popular Marching Cubes algorithm for the very first time. In an application section, we demonstrate the extraction of VESTA isosurfaces for various data sets ranging from computer tomographic scan data to simulation data of relativistic hydrodynamic fireball expansions.Comment: 24 pages, 33 figures, 4 tables, final versio

Nilpotent Approximations of Sub-Riemannian Distances for Fast Perceptual Grouping of Blood Vessels in 2D and 3D

We propose an efficient approach for the grouping of local orientations (points on vessels) via nilpotent approximations of sub-Riemannian distances in the 2D and 3D roto-translation groups $SE(2)$ and $SE(3)$. In our distance approximations we consider homogeneous norms on nilpotent groups that locally approximate $SE(n)$, and which are obtained via the exponential and logarithmic map on $SE(n)$. In a qualitative validation we show that the norms provide accurate approximations of the true sub-Riemannian distances, and we discuss their relations to the fundamental solution of the sub-Laplacian on $SE(n)$. The quantitative experiments further confirm the accuracy of the approximations. Quantitative results are obtained by evaluating perceptual grouping performance of retinal blood vessels in 2D images and curves in challenging 3D synthetic volumes. The results show that 1) sub-Riemannian geometry is essential in achieving top performance and 2) that grouping via the fast analytic approximations performs almost equally, or better, than data-adaptive fast marching approaches on $\mathbb{R}^n$ and $SE(n)$.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables, in review at JMI

Finsler Active Contours

©2008 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or distribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.DOI: 10.1109/TPAMI.2007.70713In this paper, we propose an image segmentation technique based on augmenting the conformal (or geodesic) active contour framework with directional information. In the isotropic case, the euclidean metric is locally multiplied by a scalar conformal factor based on image information such that the weighted length of curves lying on points of interest (typically edges) is small. The conformal factor that is chosen depends only upon position and is in this sense isotropic. Although directional information has been studied previously for other segmentation frameworks, here, we show that if one desires to add directionality in the conformal active contour framework, then one gets a well-defined minimization problem in the case that the factor defines a Finsler metric. Optimal curves may be obtained using the calculus of variations or dynamic programming-based schemes. Finally, we demonstrate the technique by extracting roads from aerial imagery, blood vessels from medical angiograms, and neural tracts from diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imagery

Localizing Region-Based Active Contours

©2008 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or distribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.DOI: 10.1109/TIP.2008.2004611In this paper, we propose a natural framework that allows any region-based segmentation energy to be re-formulated in a local way. We consider local rather than global image statistics and evolve a contour based on local information. Localized contours are capable of segmenting objects with heterogeneous feature profiles that would be difficult to capture correctly using a standard global method. The presented technique is versatile enough to be used with any global region-based active contour energy and instill in it the benefits of localization. We describe this framework and demonstrate the localization of three well-known energies in order to illustrate how our framework can be applied to any energy. We then compare each localized energy to its global counterpart to show the improvements that can be achieved. Next, an in-depth study of the behaviors of these energies in response to the degree of localization is given. Finally, we show results on challenging images to illustrate the robust and accurate segmentations that are possible with this new class of active contour models

Curve segmentation using directional information, relation to pattern detection

©2005 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or distribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.Presented at the 2005 International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP)September 11-14, 2005, Genova, Italy.DOI: 10.1109/ICIP.2005.1530175We propose an extension of the conformal (or geodesic) active contour framework in which the conformal factor depends not only on the position of the curve but also on the direction of its tangent. We describe several properties for variational curve segmentation schemes that justify the construction of optimal conformal factors (i.e., learning) in strong connection with pattern matching. The determination of optimal curves (i.e., segmentation) can be performed using either the calculus of variations or dynamic programming. The technique is illustrated on a road detection problem for different signal to noise ratios