Improving Performance of Region-Based ACM with Topological Change of Curves

This paper proposes efficient schemes for image segmentation using the region-based active contour model. The developed methods can approach the boundaries of the desired objects by evolving the curves through minimization of the Mumford-Shah energy functionals, given arbitrary curves as initial conditions. Topological changes such as splitting or merging of curves should be handled for the methods to work properly without prior knowledge of the number of objects to be segmented. This paper introduces how to change topological structure of the curves and shows experimental results by applying the methods to the images.