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Image Segmentation Using Level Set Driven by Generalized Divergence

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Abstract

Image segmentation is an important analysis tool in the field of computer vision. In this paper, on the basis of the traditional level set method, a novel segmentation model using generalized divergences is proposed. The main advantage of generalized divergences is their smooth connection performance among various kinds of well-known and frequently used fundamental divergences with one formula. Therefore, the discrepancy between two probability distributions of segmented image parts can be measured by generalized divergences. We also found a solution to determine the optimal divergence automatically for different images. Experimental results on a variety of synthetic and natural images are presented, which demonstrate the potential of the proposed method. Compared with the previous active contour models formulated to solve the same nonparametric statistical segmentation problem, our method performs better both qualitatively and quantitatively.

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Acknowledgements

The work is supported by National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC0309400), National Natural Science Foundation of China (61871188), Guangzhou city science and technology research projects (201902020008).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronic and Information Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, China

    Ming Dai, Zhiheng Zhou & Yongfan Guo

  2. Department of Intelligent Manufacturing, Wuyi University, Jiangmen, 529020, Guangdong, China

    Tianlei Wang

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  1. Ming Dai
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  2. Zhiheng Zhou
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  3. Tianlei Wang
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  4. Yongfan Guo
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Correspondence to Zhiheng Zhou.

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Dai, M., Zhou, Z., Wang, T. et al. Image Segmentation Using Level Set Driven by Generalized Divergence. Circuits Syst Signal Process 40, 719–737 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00034-020-01491-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00034-020-01491-x

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