A ROBUST ACTIVE CONTOUR APPROACH FOR STUDYING CELL DEFORMATION FROM NOISY IMAGES

This work presents a generalized formulation of the Snake model defining new terms for the internal and the external energy functionals. These modifications conjugate features of the object contour as well as the inside of the shape. The obtained model is significantly more accurate spatially on the image plane and temporally on the frame sequence. In particular, the application to single cell analysis is in focus: In this context, we show how to cast the specific problem into the extended framework we propose. Shape descriptors and suitable metrics are then derived from the curve representation. The boundary identification produced through the classic formulation shows a poor and imprecise segmentation and leads to misleading metrics. The new model instead represents the boundary and the derived shape parameters in a way more consistent with the visual perception of shape evolution and deformation.