A new active contour model for shape extraction

We propose a new active contour model for shape extraction of objects in grey-valued two-dimensional images based on an energy-minimization formulation. The energy functional that we consider takes into account the two requirements of object isolation and smoothness of the contour. After deriving the Euler-Lagrange equations corresponding to the energy functional, we bring out some important geometric properties of a solution to these equations. The discussion on our solution method-with the help of which we try to minimize the energy functional by evolving an initial curve-also focuses on how to prescribe the initial curve fully automatically. The effectiveness of our algorithms is demonstrated with the help of experimental results. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.