TY - CONF T1 - A Multi-Layer Phase Field Model for Extracting Multiple Near-Circular Objects T2 - International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR) Y1 - 2012 A1 - Csaba Molnar A1 - Zoltan Kato A1 - Ian Jermyn ED - Jan-Olof Eklundh ED - Yuichi Ohta ED - Steven Tanimoto AB -

This paper proposes a functional that assigns low `energy' to sets of subsets of the image domain consisting of a number of possibly overlapping near-circular regions of approximately a given radius: a `gas of circles'. The model can be used as a prior for object extraction whenever the objects conform to the `gas of circles' geometry, e.g. cells in biological images. Configurations are represented by a multi-layer phase field. Each layer has an associated function, regions being defined by thresholding. Intra-layer interactions assign low energy to configurations consisting of non-overlapping near-circular regions, while overlapping regions are represented in separate layers. Inter-layer interactions penalize overlaps. Here we present a theoretical and experimental analysis of the model.

 

JF - International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR) PB - IEEE CY - Tsukuba, Japan SN - 978-1-4673-2216-4 ER -