¹College of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China
²College of Precision Instrument and Opto-Electronics Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

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Abstract—Active contour model (ACM) which has been extensively studied recently is one of the most successful methods in image segmentation. The present paper advances an improved hybrid model based on Region- Scalable Fitting Model by combining global convex segmentation method with edge detector operator. The proposed model not only inherits the ability of RSF model to deal with the images with intensity inhomogeneity, but also overcomes such a drawback: existence of local minima because of non-convexity that makes the segmentation result highly dependent of the initial position of the contour. In addition, the paper exploits two fast numerical implementation schemes to overcome a huge amount of level set methods. The duality projection method is implemented by introducing dual variables which lead to semi-implicit iterative scheme of dual variables as well as exact formulation of primal variables. The Split-Bregman method is implemented by introducing auxiliary variables which transform the relaxed convex model into solving simple poisson equations and exact soft thresholding formulation. Experimental results for synthetic and real medical images prove that the proposed model is featured by greater numerical accuracy and faster division speed.

Index Terms—Region-Scalable fitting model, global convex segmentation, dual projection method, Split Bregman method, image inhomogeneity

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Cite: Chang-Lei Dongye, Yong-Guo Zheng, Dong-Huan Jiang, "A Fast Global Minimization of Region-Scalable Fitting Model for Medical Image Segmentation," Journal of Software vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 280-286, 2014.