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A Contour-Based Approach to Breast Skin-Line Segementation

The idea behind the proposed method is based on finding the skin-line by using a contour growing technique. The growing process is stated following similar concepts of attraction and regularization found in active contours. The method starts by computing an scale space representation of the image in order to perform edge detection using different scales. Subsequently, an initial seed point lying in the skin-line contour is located based on a robustly estimation process. Using this seed point, a contour growing process starts based on enlarging and adapting a contour using different criteria. Basically, and following the simile of active contours or snakes we adapt the concept of attraction forces (which make the contour enter a region) and what we refer to regularization forces which penalizes rapid curvature and position changes. The final segmentation result is obtained by fitting a cubic spline along the contour points in order to obtain a smooth and continuous result.



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next up previous contents
Next: Skin-Line Detection in Scale Up: Breast Profile Segmentation Previous: A Fast Breast Segmentation   Contents
Arnau Oliver 2008-06-17