Robust medical image segmentation using particle swarm optimization aided level set based global fitting energy active contour approach

The active contour models have been popularly employed for image segmentation for almost a decade now. Among these active contour models, the level set based Chan and Vese algorithm is a popular region-based model that inherently utilizes intensity homogeneity in each region under consideration. However, the Chan and Vese model often suffers from the possibility of getting trapped in a local minimum, if the contour is not properly initialized. This problem assumes greater importance in the context of medical images where the intensity variations may assume large varieties of local and global profiles. In this work we propose a robust version of the Chan and Vese algorithm which is expected to achieve satisfactory segmentation performance, irrespective of the initial choice of the contour. This work formulates the fitting energy minimization problem to be solved using a metaheuristic optimization algorithm and makes a successful implementation of our algorithm using particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique. Our algorithm has been developed for two-phase level set implementation of the Chan and Vese model and it has been successfully utilized for both scalar-valued and vector-valued images. Extensive experimentations utilizing different varieties of medical images demonstrate how our proposed method could significantly improve upon the quality of segmentation performance achieved by Chan and Vese algorithm with varied initializations of contours. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.