Performance comparison of Canny and Sobel edge detectors on Balloon Snake in segmenting masses

The most common problem in image processing is image segmentation. One of the methods which can segment an image with a high accuracy is Balloon Snake. It uses the energy minimization conception where it has a dynamic behavior that deforms from an initial position and converges to the boundary of the object in an image. However, we found that the accurateness always influences by the edge map detector that being used in implementing the Balloon Snake. Edge map detector is used to strengthen the boundary of the object before the object is segmented. Two popular edge map detectors are chosen in this research namely Canny and Sobel edge detector. Both edge detectors are implemented in Balloon Snake in segmenting 40 masses in breast ultrasound images. The pixel area traced by the two combination methods namely Canny and Balloon Snake and Sobel and Balloon Snake are evaluated. The accuracy is measured based on the percentage pixel area difference between radiologist and the both combination methods. It is found that the combination of using Canny and Balloon Snake give 3.5% percentage of pixel area difference which is smaller compared to the other combination which have 12.7% percentage pixel area difference.