Geometric models for active contours

A geometric formulation of active contours for 2D, 3D boundary detection and motion tracking is presented. The technique is based on active contours evolving in time according to intrinsic geometric measures of the image. The evolving contours naturally split and merge, allowing the simultaneous detection of several objects and both interior and exterior boundaries. The proposed approach is based on the relation between active contours and the computation of minimal distance curves or minimal surfaces in a Riemannian space whose metric is derived from the image. Previous models of geometric active contours are improved allowing stable boundary detection when their gradients suffer from large variations, including gaps. Numerical experiments are also presented.