Fast Region-based Active Contour Model Driven by Local Signed Pressure Force

Intensity inhomogeneity is a well-known problem in image segmentation. In this paper, we present a new region-based active contour model for image segmentation which can handle intensity inhomogeneity problem. This model introduced a new region-based signed pressure force (SPF) function, which uses the local mean values provided by the local binary fitted (LBF) model. In addition, the proposed model utilizes a new regularization operation such as morphological opening and closing to regularize the level set function in the evolution process. Experimental results on synthetic and real images show that the proposed model gives satisfactory segmentation results as well as less sensitivity to the initial contour location and less time consuming compared to the LBF model.