From Ziplock Snakes to Velcro Surfaces

W. Neuenschwander, P. Fua, G. Székely and O. Kübler
Ascona Workshop '95: Automatic Extraction of Man-Made Objects from Aerial and Space Images
April 1995

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Abstract

Even though methods based on the use of deformable models have become prevalent, the quality of their output depends critically on the model's initial state. The issue of initializing such models, however, has not received much attention even though it is often key to the implementation of a truly useful system. We therefore present a new approach to segmentation of 3--Dimensional shapes that initializes and then optimizes a 3--D surface model given only the data and a very small number of 3--D seed points and corresponding surface normals. This is a valuable capability for medical, robotic and cartographic applications where such seed points can be naturally supplied. In effect, the surface model is clamped onto the object boundary in manner reminiscent of a Velcro being closed. We develop the method's mathematic framework and show preliminary results using volumetric medical data.

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Download in postscript format

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@InProceedings{eth_biwi_00073,
  author = {W. Neuenschwander and P. Fua and G. Székely and O. K\"ubler},
  title = {From Ziplock Snakes to Velcro Surfaces},
  booktitle = {Ascona Workshop '95: Automatic Extraction of Man-Made Objects from Aerial and Space Images},
  year = {1995},
  month = {April},
  pages = {105--114},
  keywords = {grouping, segmentation, deformable, surface, deformable surface models, snakes}
}