Improved C-V active contour model

An improved C-V active contour model was presented, with which the image data force in the C-V model is significantly simplified according to the curve evolution theory. The level set function can be initialized to be zero according to the theory analysis. Distinguished from original C-V model, the level set function of the proposed model is Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE). The proposed model not only has the original C-V model's characteristics, such as the ability of detecting inner edge of the object with inner hole, etc, but also has many advantages as follows: anti-noise performance is good; re-initialization is unnecessary, and the efficiency of global segmentation is dramatically improved; the edges far away from the active contours would be seriously suppressed by setting the Dirac function to be one; the implementation does not require any limitation of time step. The method is validated with both synthetic and real images. Experimental results demonstrate the robustness and efficiency of the model.