全局正定径向基函数在图像分割中的应用

将全局正定径向基函数和图像分割中基于偏微分方程水平集方法的发展方程相结合,提出了一种基于全局正定径向基函数的图像分割算法。用全局正定径向基函数插值发展方程中的水平集函数,得到的插值函数具有较高的精度和光滑性,克服了传统水平集方法中复杂费时的重新初始化过程和水平集对初始轮廓位置敏感等缺点,非线性发展方程最终被转化成常微分方程组并用Euler法求解。实验结果表明该算法不需要重新初始化过程,并且在没有初始轮廓时也能够快速正确地分割图像。     

The parameterized level set method for structural topology optimization with shape sensitivity constraint factor

In recent years, the parameterized level set method (PLSM) has attracted widespread attention for its good stability, high efficiency and the smooth result of topology optimization compared with the conventional level set method. In the PLSM, the radial basis functions (RBFs) are often used to perform interpolation fitting for the conventional level set equation, thereby transforming the iteratively updating partial differential equation (PDE) into ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Hence, the RBFs play a key role in improving efficiency, accuracy and stability of the numerical computation in the PLSM for structural topology optimization, which can describe the structural topology and its change in the optimization process. In particular, the compactly supported radial basis function (CS-RBF) has been widely used in the PLSM for structural topology optimization because it enjoys considerable advantages. In this work, based on the CS-RBF, we propose a PLSM for structural topology optimization by adding the shape sensitivity constraint factor to control the step length in the iterations while updating the design variables with the method of moving asymptote (MMA). With the shape sensitivity constraint factor, the updating step length is changeable and controllable in the iterative process of MMA algorithm so as to increase the optimization speed. Therefore, the efficiency and stability of structural topology optimization can be improved by this method. The feasibility and effectiveness of this method are demonstrated by several typical numerical examples involving topology optimization of single-material and multi-material structures.

     

Fast Global Minimization of the Active Contour/Snake Model

The active contour/snake model is one of the most successful variational models in image segmentation. It consists of evolving a contour in images toward the boundaries of objects. Its success is based on strong mathematical properties and efficient numerical schemes based on the level set method. The only drawback of this model is the existence of local minima in the active contour energy, which makes the initial guess critical to get satisfactory results. In this paper, we propose to solve this problem by determining a global minimum of the active contour model. Our approach is based on the unification of image segmentation and image denoising tasks into a global minimization framework. More precisely, we propose to unify three well-known image variational models, namely the snake model, the Rudin–Osher–Fatemi denoising model and the Mumford–Shah segmentation model. We will establish theorems with proofs to determine the existence of a global minimum of the active contour model. From a numerical point of view, we propose a new practical way to solve the active contour propagation problem toward object boundaries through a dual formulation of the minimization problem. The dual formulation, easy to implement, allows us a fast global minimization of the snake energy. It avoids the usual drawback in the level set approach that consists of initializing the active contour in a distance function and re-initializing it periodically during the evolution, which is time-consuming. We apply our segmentation algorithms on synthetic and real-world images, such as texture images and medical images, to emphasize the performances of our model compared with other segmentation models. Research supported by NIH U54RR021813, NSF DMS-0312222, NSF ACI-0321917 and NSF DMI-0327077.     

在图像分割中对水平集函数应用的研究

图像分割是从图像处理到图像分析的关键技术,几何活动轮廓模型是为解决图像处理和计算机视觉领域广泛存在的图像分割问题而提出来的。水平集函数是在研究几何活动轮廓模型时将界面或者演化曲线看成高一维空间中某一函数山原型。文章在分析传统水平集函数和距离保持水平集函数优缺点的基础上,引入图像相依的权系数v（I）代替常值权系数,提出了一种自适应距离保持水平集函数。然后通过对水平集函数求其偏微分方程,经过数值实现并求出其解,从而得出图形界面的基本形状和特征。     

一种改进的活动区域轮廓模型 ——无需水平集重新初始化

基于区域的活动区域模型已经成功应用在图像分割、目标跟踪等领域,较之基于梯度的活动轮廓模型具有很多优点。但是,这些水平集模型在演化过程中,为了保持为符号距离函数,必须对其重新初始化,降低了曲线演化速度,增加了实现复杂度。为了解决重新初始化问题,在测地活动区域模型的能量函数中,加入惩罚项来约束水平集保持为符号距离函数,无需再重新初始化,极大地提高了演化速度。将其运用在纹理图像、脑MR图像分割以及视频跟踪中,实验证明该模型是有效的。     

Moving-boundary problems solved by adaptive radial basis functions

The objective of this paper is to present an alternative approach to the conventional level set methods for solving two-dimensional moving-boundary problems known as the passive transport. Moving boundaries are associated with time-dependent problems and the position of the boundaries need to be determined as a function of time and space. The level set method has become an attractive design tool for tracking, modeling and simulating the motion of free boundaries in fluid mechanics, combustion, computer animation and image processing. Recent research on the numerical method has focused on the idea of using a meshless methodology for the numerical solution of partial differential equations. In the present approach, the moving interface is captured by the level set method at all time with the zero contour of a smooth function known as the level set function. A new approach is used to solve a convective transport equation for advancing the level set function in time. This new approach is based on the asymmetric meshless collocation method and the adaptive greedy algorithm for trial subspaces selection. Numerical simulations are performed to verify the accuracy and stability of the new numerical scheme which is then applied to simulate a bubble that is moving, stretching and circulating in an ambient flow to demonstrate the performance of the new meshless approach.     

Implicit and Nonparametric Shape Reconstruction from Unorganized Data Using a Variational Level Set Method

In this paper we consider a fundamental visualization problem: shape reconstruction from an unorganized data set. A new minimal-surface-like model and its variational and partial differential equation (PDE) formulation are introduced. In our formulation only distance to the data set is used as our input. Moreover, the distance is computed with optimal speed using a new numerical PDE algorithm. The data set can include points, curves, and surface patches. Our model has a natural scaling in the nonlinear regularization that allows flexibility close to the data set while it also minimizes oscillations between data points. To find the final shape, we continuously deform an initial surface following the gradient flow of our energy functional. An offset (an exterior contour) of the distance function to the data set is used as our initial surface. We have developed a new and efficient algorithm to find this initial surface. We use the level set method in our numerical computation in order to capture the deformation of the initial surface and to find an implicit representation (using the signed distance function) of the final shape on a fixed rectangular grid. Our variational/PDE approach using the level set method allows us to handle complicated topologies and noisy or highly nonuniform data sets quite easily. The constructed shape is smoother than any piecewise linear reconstruction. Moreover, our approach is easily scalable for different resolutions and works in any number of space dimensions.     

A novel active contour model for image segmentation using distance regularization term

In this paper, a novel active contour model (R-DRLSE model) based on level set method is proposed for image segmentation. The R-DRLSE model is a variational level set approach that utilizes the region information to find image contours by minimizing the presented energy functional. To avoid the time-consuming re-initialization step, the distance regularization term is used to penalize the deviation of the level set function from a signed distance function. The numerical implementation scheme of the model can significantly reduce the iteration number and computation time. The results of experiments performed on some synthetic and real images show that the R-DRLSE model is effective and efficient. In particular, our method has been applied to MR kidney image segmentation with desirable results.     

几何活动轮廓模型中停止速度函数的尺度变换

近年来,通过水平集方法实现的几何活动轮廓模型（GAC）已成为图像处理和计算机视觉领域里十分流行的图像分割方法。几乎所有的GAC模型都依赖于停止速度函数,该函数通常是基于图像梯度定义的,其作用是使活动轮廓（演化曲线）停止在所希望的目标边界上。为了加快活动轮廓的演化速度,提出对停止速度函数进行尺度变换的方法。对4幅人工和自然图像的实验结果显示,所提出的方案能够大大减少分割时间,同时,对于凹陷边界和弱边界的分割取得了更好的效果。     

Sub-pixel distance maps and weighted distance transforms

A new framework for computing the Euclidean distance and weighted distance from the boundary of a given digitized shape is presented. The distance is calculated with sub-pixel accuracy. The algorithm is based on a equal distance contour evolution process. The moving contour is embedded as a level set in a time varying function of higher dimension. This representation of the evolving contour makes possible the use of an accurate and stable numerical scheme, due to Osher and Sethian [22]. The relation between the classical shape from shading problem and the weighted distance transform is presented, as well as an algorithm that calculates the geodesic distance transform on surfaces.     

Active Contours Under Topology Control—Genus Preserving Level Sets

We present a novel framework to exert topology control over a level set evolution. Level set methods offer several advantages over parametric active contours, in particular automated topological changes. In some applications, where some a priori knowledge of the target topology is available, topological changes may not be desirable. This is typically the case in biomedical image segmentation, where the topology of the target shape is prescribed by anatomical knowledge. However, topologically constrained evolutions often generate topological barriers that lead to large geometric inconsistencies. We introduce a topologically controlled level set framework that greatly alleviates this problem. Unlike existing work, our method allows connected components to merge, split or vanish under some specific conditions that ensure that the genus of the initial active contour (i.e. its number of handles) is preserved. We demonstrate the strength of our method on a wide range of numerical experiments and illustrate its performance on the segmentation of cortical surfaces and blood vessels. Electronic Supplementary Material  The online version of this article () contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Moment-based alignment for shape prior with variational B-spline level set

This paper presents a new shape prior-based implicit active contour model for image segmentation. The paper proposes an energy functional including a data term and a shape prior term. The data term, inspired from the region-based active contour approach, evolves the contour based on the region information of the image to segment. The shape prior term, defined as the distance between the evolving shape and a reference shape, constraints the evolution of the contour with respect to the reference shape. Especially, in this paper, we present shapes via geometric moments, and utilize the shape normalization procedure, which takes into account the affine transformation, to align the evolving shape with the reference one. By this way, we could directly calculate the shape transformation, instead of solving a set of coupled partial differential equations as in the gradient descent approach. In addition, we represent the level-set function in the proposed energy functional as a linear combination of continuous basic functions expressed on a B-spline basic. This allows a fast convergence to the segmentation solution. Experiment results on synthetic, real, and medical images show that the proposed model is able to extract object boundaries even in the presence of clutter and occlusion.     

Structural topology optimization with design-dependent pressure loads

One way to solve topology optimization of continuum structures under design-dependent pressure loads is to recover the loading surface at each step of the minimization process. During the topology evolution, the intermediate topologies obtained by using the SIMP (Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization) method actually can be regarded as gray scale images, for which the paper proposes a new material boundary identification scheme based on image segmentation technique. The Distance Regularized Level Set Evolution (DRLSE) method proposed by Li et al., IEEE Trans Image Process 19(12):3243–3254 (2010) is utilized to detect the image edge. Then the pressure boundary is represented as the zero level contour of a level set function (LSF). Inheriting the merits of the level set method, the current scheme can handle the topological change of the pressure boundary efficiently and be easily extended to the three-dimensional problems. In addition, the scheme is more stable compared with the conventional loading surface searching methods since it works well for the intermediate topologies with local scattered densities. A new optimization framework is also proposed to avoid the load sensitivity analysis. Four numerical examples are presented to show the validity and advantages of the proposed scheme.     

A shape prior constraint for implicit active contours

We present a shape prior constraint to guide the evolution of implicit active contours. Our method includes three core techniques. Firstly, a rigid registration is introduced, using a line search method within a level set framework. The method automatically finds the time step for the iterative optimization processes. The order for finding the optimal translation, rotation and scale is derived experimentally. Secondly, a single reconstructed shape is created from a shape distribution of a previously acquired learning set. The reconstructed shape is applied to guide the active contour evolution. Thirdly, our method balances the impact of the shape prior versus the image guidance of the active contour. A mixed stopping condition is defined based on the stationarity of the evolving curve and the shape prior constraint. Our method is completely non-parametric and avoids taking linear combinations of non-linear signed distance functions, which would cause problems because distance functions are not closed under linear operations. Experimental results show that our method is able to extract the desired objects in several circumstances, namely when noise is present in the image, when the objects are in slightly different poses and when parts of the object are invisible in the image.     

基于核特征距离的局部活动轮廓模型

提出了一种基于核特征距离局部活动轮廓分割模型。在模型中使用核特征距离来构造局部拟合能量,从而可以获取精确的局部图像特征,可以分割存在灰度不均匀的图像。并通过引入水平集规范项以避免水平集演化的重新初始化,提高了分割的效率。实验结果表明,本模型可以很好地克服灰度不均匀性,同时在分割精度上有了较大的提升,特别是分割速度比LBF模型快1.3～1.5倍。     

双重轮廓演化曲线的图像分割水平集模型

目的几何活动轮廓模型的标志性模型C-V模型及其改进LBF模型受到关注,然而这两个模型对初始轮廓曲线较强的依赖性使得模型在实际图像目标分割中表现出不稳定性或具有较高的时间复杂性。本文在对C-V模型及LBF模型的原理及对初始轮廓曲线的依赖特性进行分析的基础上,提出一种基于双重轮廓演化曲线的图像分割水平集模型。方法所提出模型的主要过程如下:1)通过设置内、外两条轮廓线,使模型在演化过程中分别从目标的内部和外部向目标边界逼近,两条轮廓线的设计原则简单,其分别位于目标的外部和与目标有重叠;2)两条轮廓线的演化走向是通过在模型中设置相关项自动控制的,即演化过程中通过最小化内、外轮廓之间的差异来自动控制两条轮廓曲线的演化趋向,使之同时从目标的内部和外部向目标边界逼近,并逐渐稳定于目标的边界。结果所提出的模型通过设置内部能量泛函项,避免了对符号距离函数的重新初始化;通过采用全局化的正则函数,增加了模型对复杂异质区域边界的捕捉能力;通过采用内、外轮廓线同时演化机制,避免了模型对初始轮廓线的过依赖性。结论所提出的模型很好地解决了传统基于区域的分割模型对轮廓曲线初始化的过依赖问题,对初始轮廓线的设置较为简单且具有较强的鲁棒性,对图像目标的分割较为准确和稳定。     

隐式曲面上两相图像分割的变分水平集方法

在平面图像分割的Chan-Vese模型基础上,提出隐式曲面上两相图像分割模型。用静态水平集函数的零水平集表达图像所在的闭合曲面,用另一动态水平集函数的零水平集与静态水平集函数零水平集的交线表达静态曲面上图像分割的动态轮廓线。所研究模型的能量泛函的数据项即为曲面上两分割区域的图像强度与对应区域平均图像强度的差的平方,其轮廓线长度项为两水平集函数的零水平集交线的长度。为避免动态水平集函数的重新初始化,在能量泛函中引入水平集函数为符号距离函数的约束惩罚项。通过变分方法得到图像分割空间轮廓线演化的梯度降方程。通过显式差分格式对演化方程进行离散。实验结果表明,该模型能有效实现复杂封闭曲面上图像的两相分割。     

基于径向基点插值的Chan-Vese模型图像分割算法

基于水平集方法的Chan-Vese模型是一种典型的几何活动轮廓模型,已成功应用于众多领域中的图像分割问题。为了提高该模型的演化速度和分割效果,提出了一种基于径向基点插值求解Chan-Vese模型的高效数值算法。通过用径向基点插值法逼近水平集函数,Chan-Vese模型被离散为常微分方程组初值问题并可用向前Euler法求解。该算法不需要网格单元,对水平集初始轮廓不敏感,不涉及复杂费时的重新初始化过程,并且有明确的演化终止条件,无需事先设置演化次数。实验表明该算法在没有初始轮廓时也能正确分割图像,具有很快的演化速度。     

A new level set method for systematic design of hinge-free compliant mechanisms

This paper presents a new level set-based method to realize shape and topology optimization of hinge-free compliant mechanisms. A quadratic energy functional used in image processing applications is introduced in the level set method to control the geometric width of structural components in the created mechanism. A semi-implicit scheme with an additive operator splitting (AOS) algorithm is employed to solve the Hamilton-Jacobi partial differential equation (PDE) in the level set method. The design of compliant mechanisms is mathematically represented as a general non-linear programming with a new objective function augmented by the high-order energy term. The structural optimization is thus changed to a numerical process that describes the design as a sequence of motions by updating the implicit boundaries until the optimized structure is achieved under specified constraints. In doing so, it is expected that numerical difficulties such as the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) condition and periodically applied re-initialization procedures in most conventional level set methods can be eliminated. In addition, new holes can be created inside the design domain. The final mechanism configurations consist of strip-like members suitable for generating distributed compliance, and solving the de-facto hinge problem in the design of compliant mechanisms. Two widely studied numerical examples are studied to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in the context of designing distributed compliant mechanisms.     

Sub-Voxel Topology Control for Level-Set Surfaces

Active contour models are an efficient, accurate, and robust tool for the segmentation of 2D and 3D image data.In particular, geometric deformable models (GDM) that represent an active contour as the level set of an implicitfunction have proven to be very effective. GDMs, however, do not provide any topology control, i.e. contours maymerge or split arbitrarily and hence change the genus of the reconstructed surface. This behavior is inadequate insettings like the segmentation of organic tissue or other objects whose genus is known beforehand. In this paperwe describe a novel method to overcome this limitation while still preserving the favorable properties of the GDMsetup. We achieve this by adding (sparse) topological information to the volume representation at locations whereit is necessary to locally resolve topological ambiguities. Since the sparse topology information is attached to theedges of the voxel grid, we can reconstruct the interfaces where the deformable surface touches itself at sub-voxelaccuracy. We also demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of our method.