Andrei C. Jalba and Jos B. T. M. Roerdink.. A physically-motivated deformable model based on fluid dynamics. In: Computer Vision --- ECCV 2006, A. Leonardis, H. Bischof and A. Pinz (eds.), 2006, LNCS 3951, pp. 496-507, Proceedings, Part I.
A novel deformable model for image segmentation and shape recovery is presented. The model is inspired by fluid dynamics and is based on a flooding simulation similar to the watershed paradigm. Unlike most watershed methods, our model has a continuous formulation, being described by two partial differential equations. In this model, different fluids, added to the simulation by manually or automatically-placed density (dye) sources, are attracted towards the contours of the objects of interest by an image force. In contrast to the watershed method, when different fluids meet they may mix. When the topographical relief of the image is flooded, the interfaces separating homogeneous fluid regions can be traced to yield the contours of the objects of interest. We demonstrate the flexibility and potential of our model in two experimental settings: shape recovery using manual initializations and automated segmentation.
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