• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.79-87
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• 2005

This paper presents an active contour model for extracting accurate facial regions in complex environments. In the model, a contour is represented by a zero level set of level function φ, and evolved via level set partial differential equations. Then, unlike general active contours, skin color information that is represented by 2D Gaussian model is used for evolving and slopping a curve, which allows the proposed method to be robust to noise and varying pose. To assess the effectiveness of the proposed method it was tested with several natural scenes, and the results were compared with those of geodesic active contours. Experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.9 no.9
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• pp.1150-1159
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• 2006

This paper proposed a curve progress control function of the area base instead of the existing edge indication function, in order to detect the brain ventricle area by utilizing a geodesic active contour model. The proposed curve progress control function is very effective in detecting the brain ventricle area and this function is based on the average brightness of the brain ventricle area which appears brighter in MRI images. Compared numerically by using various measures, the proposed method in this paper can detect brain ventricle areas better than the existing method. By examining images of normal and diseased brain's images by brain tumor, we compared the several brain ventricle detection algorithms with proposed method visually and verified the effectiveness of the proposed method.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.196-204
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• 2016

World Health Organization reported that heart-related diseases such as coronary artery stenoses show the highest occurrence rate which may cause heart attack. Using Computed Tomography angiography images will allow radiologists to detect and have intervention by creating 3D roadmapping of the vessels. However, it is often complex and difficult do reconstruct 3D vessel which causes very large amount of time and previous researches were studied to segment vessels more accurate automatically. Therefore, in this paper, Region Competition, Geodesic Active Contour (GAC), Multi-atlas based segmentation and Active Shape Model algorithms were applied to segment aortic root from CTA images and the results were analyzed by using mean Hausdorff distance, volume to volume measure, computational time, user-interaction and coronary ostium detection rate. As a result, Extracted 3D aortic model using GAC showed the highest accuracy but also showed highest user-interaction results. Therefore, it is important to improve automatic segmentation algorithm in future

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.641-650
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• 2005

In this parer, curve stopping function based on the CT number of lung parenchyma from CT lung images is proposed to detect lung region in replacement of conventional edge indication function in geodesic active contour model. We showed that the proposed method was able to detect lung region more effectively than conventional method by applying three kinds of measurement numerically. And, we verified the effectiveness of proposed method visually by observing the detection Procedure on actual CT images. Because lung parenchyma region could be precisely detected from actual EBCT (electron beam computer tomography) lung images, we were sure that the Proposed method could aid to early diagnosis of lung disease and local abnormality of function.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.713-720
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• 2007

In image-guided surgery, automatic bone segmentation of Computed Tomography (CT) images is an important but challenging step. Previous attempts include intensity-, edge-, region-, and deformable curve-based approaches [1], but none claims fully satisfactory performance. Although active contour (AC) techniques possess many excellent characteristics, their applications in CT image segmentation have not worthily exploited yet. In this study, we have evaluated the automaticity and performance of the model of Chan-Vese Multiphase AC Without Edges towards knee bone segmentation from CT images. This model is suitable because it is initialization-insensitive and topology-adaptive. Its segmentation results have been qualitatively compared with those from four other widely used AC models: namely Gradient Vector Flow (GVF) AC, Geometric AC, Geodesic AC, and GVF Fast Geometric AC. To quantitatively evaluate its performance, the results from a commercial software and a medical expert have been used. The evaluation results show that the Chan-Vese model provides superior performance with least user interaction, proving its suitability for automatic bone segmentation from CT images.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.23-31
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• 2000

Iterative curve evolution techniques are powerful methods for image segmentation. Classical methods proposed curve evolutions which guarantee close contours at convergence and, combined with the level set method, they easily handled curve topology changes. In this paper, we present a new geometric active contour model based on level set methods introduced by Osher & Sethian for detection of object boundaries or shape and we adopt anisotropic diffusion filtering method for removing noise from original image. Classical methods allow only one-way curve evolutions : shrinking or expanding of the curve. Thus, the initial curve must encircle all the objects to be segmented or several curves must be used, each one totally inside one object. But our method allows a two-way curve evolution : parts of the curve evolve in the outward direction while others evolve in the inward direction. It offers much more freedom in the initial curve position than with a classical geodesic search method. Our algorithm performs accurate and precise segmentations from noisy images with complex objects(jncluding sharp angles, deep concavities or holes), Besides it easily handled curve topology changes. In order to minimize the processing time, we use the narrow band method which allows us to perform calculations in the neighborhood of the contour and not in the whole image.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.10 no.9
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• pp.1117-1124
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• 2007

In this paper, an algorithm that can define the threshold value automatically proposed in order to detect a brain ventricle in MRI brain images. After the wavelet transform, edge sharpness, which means the average magnitude of detail signals on the contour of the object, was computed by using the magnitude of horizontal and vertical detail signals. The contours of a brain ventricle were detected by increasing the threshold value repeatedly and computing edge sharpness. When the edge sharpness became maximal, the optimal threshold was determined, and the detection of a brain ventricle was accomplished finally. In this paper, we compared the proposed algorithm with the geodesic active contour model numerically and verified the efficiency of the proposed algorithm by applying real MRI brain images.