Active contour model based on local intensity fitting and atlas correcting information for medical image segmentation

Intensity inhomogeneity and noises often occur in real medical images, which present a large degree of challenge to image segmentation. At the same time, most of the existing image segmentation algorithms are sensitive to initial conditions and model parameters. This paper presents an accurate and robust active contour model to solve the above problems. Inspired by the idea of the region-scalable fitting (RSF) model, we first define a local atlas fitting term transformed by the segmentation contour of the coherent local intensity clustering (CLIC) model. Then, we define a new energy functional by merging the atlas term into the energy functional of the RSF model. The advantage of this operation is that it makes full use of the existing segmentation features and advantages of the two models and avoids cumbersome adjustment of model parameters and initial contours. The experimental results clearly show that the improved model not only has better segmentation results than the RSF model and other active contour models such as the LINC, REGAC and SMAP models, but also solves the problem of sensitivity to initial contours, parameters adjustment and noise.