Segmentation and simulation of objects represented in images using physical pri...

• Author(s): Patrícia C. T. Gonçalves ; João Manuel R. S. Tavares ; R. M. Natal Jorge
• Date: 2008
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10216/6775
• Origin: Repositório Aberto da Universidade do Porto
• Subject(s): Ciências Tecnológicas; Tecnologia; Tecnologia de computadores; Processamento de imagem
• Document Type: Article
• Language: English

Description

The main goals of the present work are to automatically extract the contour of an object and to simulate its deformation using a physical approach. In this work, to seg-ment an object represented in an image, an initial contour is manually defined for it that will then automatically evolve until it reaches the border of the desired object. In this ap-proach, the contour is modelled by a physical formulation using the finite element method, and its temporal evolution to the desired final contour is driven by internal and external forces. The internal forces are defined by the intrinsic charac-teristics of the material adopted for the physical model and the interrelation between its nodes. The external forces are determined in function of the image features most suitable for the object to be segmented. To build the physical model of the contour used in the segmentation process, the isoparametric finite element proposed by Sclaroff is adopted, and to obtain its evolution towards the object border the methodology presented by Nastar is used, that consists in solving the dynamic equilibrium equation between two consecutive instants.