SAMI 2010 8th IEEE International Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics January 28-30, 2010 Herl'any,
ny, Slovakia
An Experimental Comparison of Modern
Methods of Segmentation
P. Karch, I. Zolotov
Technical University/Department of Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence, Koice, Slovakia
AbstractThis paper deals with experimental comparison
of classical method of Graph cut segmentation with
segmentation using Active contours. From methods of
Active contours are chosen to comparison two methods.
First method is based on classic Active contour method and
second method is based on Active contours independent on
gradient of the edges. Application of Graph cut
segmentation allows finding the optimal global segmentation
with the best balance between regional and boundary
conditions among all possible segmentations at met
condition limitations. Active contour segments the image by
iterative deformation contour till this contour divided the
image on the regions. Active contours are often
implemented with level set methods for their universality
and performance, but disadvantage is their computational
complexity. The second method of the active contour allows
to detect objects whose boundaries are not necessarily
defined by gradient. The end rule in this case does not
depend on gradient of the image, as in classical model of
active contour, but instead refer to a particular
segmentation of the image.
I. INTRODUCTION
Segmentation is generally defined as the problem of
partitioning an image into two or more segments: objects
and background.
There are mainly three approaches to segmentation.
Manual segmentation is very laborious and extremely time
consuming. Purely automatic segmentation is very
challenging, due to ambiguities in the presence of multiple
objects, weak edges, image noise, etc. Interactive
segmentation is becoming more popular to alleviate the
problems inherent to fully automatic segmentation
technique that divides the image into two segments: object
and background.
Among modern segmentation techniques belonged
method of Graph cut segmentation and Active contour
method. These techniques belong among the most
developing methods in computer vision. These techniques
are mainly initiated interactively by the user. In Graph cut
segmentation user interactively determined hard
constraints in the form of terminals, called S (source) and
T (sink) by specified certain pixels that are called seeds
that absolutely have to be part of the object and certain
pixels that absolutely have to be part of the background.
These terminals provide information on that user intends
to segment. The cost function is defined by terms of
boundary and region properties of the segments. These
properties can be perceived as soft constraints for
segmentation. In the segmentation using active contours
user interactive generally determined initialization
contour. Contour then using internal and external energy
978-1-4244-6424-1/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE
by approached to the contour of object in individual
iterations.
The details of Graph cut segmentation method are
shown in Section II A. In Section II B are details about
basic Active contour segmentation method. Section III we
provided an experimental comparison of these modern
segmentation methods implemented by Matlab for
segmentation of image sets.
II. MODERN METHODS OF SEGMENTATION
A. Graph cut segmentation
Segmentation using this method belong between
interactive methods which partitioning an image into two
segments objects and background. This method is
initialized by interactive or automated identification one
or more points representing the object and one or more
points representing background. These points are called
seeds and they are represented hard constraints of
segmentation. Other soft constraints are attributable to the
border or regional information.
This method is one of the graph algorithms, where the
main idea is to create valued, undirected graph
G = (V , E ) from image I . The graph is defined as a set
of nodes or vertices V , which represents itself pixels in
image, and a set of edges E represents any neighborhood
relationship between the pixels and valued by nonnegative
cost we . Then they are two special nodes named terminals
S (source) and T (sink) that represents object and
background labels.
Normally, there are two types of edges in the graph: n-
links and t-links. N-links connect pairs of neighboring
pixels or voxels. Thus they are represented a
neighborhood system in the image. Cost of n-links
corresponds to a penalty for discontinuity between the
pixels. T-links connect pixels with terminals (labels). The
cost of a t-links connecting a pixel and a terminal
corresponds to the penalty for assigning the corresponding
label to the pixel. This is normally derived from the data
term (6) in energy (5).
To determine the maximum flow in this graph are used
algorithms to determine the maximum flow as Ford-
Fulkerson algorithm, or algorithm described in [1].
A cut C is a subsets of edges C E which when
removed from G disjoint V into two subsets S and
T = V S such that s S and t T . Than cost of cut is
defined as the sum of cost of these edges:
C = w
eC
e (1)
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P. Karch, I. Zolotov An Experimental Comparison of Modern Methods of Segmentation

The minimum cut is the cut with smallest cost.

B{ p ,q}
Ip Ip
exp
( ) 2 1
, (8)
The problem of segmenting an object from its
background is interpreted as a binary labeling problem. 2 2 dist ( p, q)

An image is divided into set of P , which represented all
pixels in the image and set of N , which represented where dist(p,q) is the Euclidean pixel distance and is
standard 4-connected neighborhood system of pixel pairs user defined parameter.
{ p, q} , p, q P , where q is neighborhood of pixel p on
left, right, top or bottom from him. Each pixel in image B. Active contour segmentation
has assigned to the binary label Lk = {O, B} , where O The basic idea of active contour model is an evolution
represent object in the image and B represent background of the curve by limitations in the image to detect objects in
in the image. These two levels are identified by terminal the picture. They are dependent on user interaction, which
nodes S (source) and T (sink). The labeling vector consists of determining the curve around the detected
L = {L1 ,...L p ,...L I } defines segmentation. The soft object. Curve of this method deforms by the influence of
external and internal forces. The final contour after
constraints that are impose on boundary and region deformation can be used for segmentation of the image.
properties of L are described by the cost function The energy functional is minimized in this case as a
weighted combination of internal energy depending on the
E ( L) = R ( L) + B ( L) (2) shape of contour and the external energy depends on the
image or information from a higher level image
processing. Contour is defined as
where
v( s ) = [ x( s ), y ( s )], (9)
R( L) = R
pP
p (L p ) (regional term) (3)
where x(s ) , y (s ) are x, y coordinates along contour and
s [0,1] . Contour is deformed by influence of internal
and external forces to minimize energy functional
B( L) = B
{ p ,q}N
{ p ,q} ( L p , Lq ) (boundary term) (4)
1

(E (v( s)) + Eimage (v( s)) + Econ (v(s )))ds,

*
E = (10)
and int
0

1 if L p Lq where Eint is internal energy during bending, Eimage is

( L p , Lq ) = . (5)
0 if L p = Lq
energy depend on image forces and Econ is energy giving
the size of external constraint forces. Internal energy is
The coefficient in (1) defines the importance of the defined as
regional properties term R(L) versus the boundary
properties term B(L). The regional term assumes the
2
individual penalties for assigning pixel p to object and dv
2
d 2v
background, correspondingly R p (O) and R p (B) , are Eint = ( s ) + (s) , (11)
ds ds 2
given. This R p (O / B) reflect how the intensity of pixel p
fits into given intensity model (histogram) of the object where (s ) , (s ) determined elasticity and stiffness of
and background contour. The second term of (10) is derived from the
image data where contour lies. Contour can attract lines,
R p (O ) = ln P( I p | O), (6) edges and constraints by weighted combination of three
different functional

R p ( B) = ln P( I p | B). (7) Eimage = wline Eline + wedge Eedge + wterm Eterm . (12)

The boundary term B(L) comprises boundary properties where line based functional has form intensity of image by
of segmentation and determined smoothness on boundary. this shape
Coefficient B{ p ,q} 0 can be interpreted as penalty for
Eline = I ( x, y ) (13)
discontinuities between p and q. Normally, B{ p ,q} is
small when pixels p and q are very different and B{ p ,q} is and I ( x, y ) represent gray level on position ( x, y ) in
large when they are similar. The cost B{ p ,q} can be image. The value wline determined whether the contour is
determined attracted to dark or light lines. Edge based functional has
form

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 SAMI 2010 8th IEEE International Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics January 28-30, 2010 Herl'any, Slovakia

2
Eedge = I ( x, y ) (14)

and causes that contour is attracted to large image

gradients. The weighted energy functional Eterm can be
entered as

Eterm = , (15)
n R

where on this functional has affect line terminations and

corners. The gradient direction along curve is denoted by
( x, y ) . The unit vector perpendicular to the direction of
the gradient ( x, y ) is defined as

n R ( x, y ) = ( sin ( x, y ), cos ( x, y ) ) . (16)

Contour can be controlled by changing weights

wline wedge and wterm . The third term in (10) represents
the external constraints and can be determined be user
interaction or on a higher level process. That ensures that
in the event that the contour settle in a local energy
minimum that a higher level mark as incorrect, the energy
peak force contour leave this position.

III. EXPERIMENTS
This experimental comparison of modern method of
segmentation used these methods:
Graph cut segmentation used implementation [4].
Active contour segmentation based [8] and [5].
Segmentation was performed on set of three images
[10], [11] and is showed final result of each segmentation.
Graph cut segmentation used algorithm implementation
[1], [2] in [4].

Figure 1. Initialization of graph cut segmentation

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P. Karch, I. Zolotov An Experimental Comparison of Modern Methods of Segmentation

Figure 2. Result of graph cut segmentation

This segmentation method gives satisfactory results but

its biggest advantage is the low time exactingness. On this
set of images is time execution below 1 sec. The time
exactingness is increased depending on the size of image.
Figure 3. Initialization of active contour segmentation
Active contour segmentation used algorithms
implementation from section II B and [5].

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 SAMI 2010 8th IEEE International Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics January 28-30, 2010 Herl'any, Slovakia

Figure 5. Initialization of active contour segmentation based on [5]

Figure 4. Result of active contour segmentation

Active contour segmentation gives satisfactory result

but their biggest disadvantage is bigger time exactingness
for the use of iteration in this method. The speed of
segmentation by methods of active contour strongly
depends on the shape of initialization.

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P. Karch, I. Zolotov An Experimental Comparison of Modern Methods of Segmentation
Figure 6. Result of active contour segmentation based on [5]
An active contour model in Fig. 5 is implementation of
[5] which is based on Mumford-Shah segmentation
techniques and the level set method. This model is not
depended on edge function to stop evolving curve on
desired boundary. It can segment images whose
foreground and background are different and
homogenous. As can be seen on the second picture in
Figure 6 it cannot reached the desired outcome of the
segmentation.
252
Matlab Wrapper for Graph cut [4] is compiled and
implemented in Matlab R2007a. Active contours are both
implemented in Matlab R2007a. All experiments results
are given with CPU Core2Duo 2.13GHz, 3GB RAM and
256MB VGA on Windows XP Pro.
IV. CONCLUSION
The experimental implementation of algorithms shows
how the various algorithms prove a deal with a given set
of images.
The next step in others experiments will be to create
graphical user interface and implementation Graph cut
segmentation and all Active contours segmentation
algorithms to one application that simultaneously doing all
segmentations with the fact that the user can choose the
best segmentation. The final segmentation depends on
user's choice. The other step in others experiments is
hierarchical implementation of these algorithms.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is supported by grant APVV-0682-07.
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