Skeletons of an object have a variety of applications, such as automatic path generation, shape matching, identification, and classification. In this paper, we introduce a method to detect the critical points of skeletons, then skeletons of an object can be generated by linking the detected critical points. The method is based on concepts from 2-D phase plane analysis of the linear Gradient Vec...

Snakes, or active contours, are used extensively in computer vision and image processing applications, particularly to locate object boundaries. Problems associated with initialization and poor convergence to boundary concavities, however, have limited their utility. This paper presents a new external force for active contours, largely solving both problems. This external force, which we call g...

In this work, we present an automated method for the detection of cells nuclei boundaries in conventional PAP stained cervical smear images. The proposed method consists of three phases: a) the definition of candidate nuclei centroids set using mathematical morphology, b) the initial approximation of cells nuclei boundaries and c) the application of the Gradient Vector Flow (GVF) snakes for the...

BACKGROUND The Genome Variant Format (GVF) uses the Sequence Ontology (SO) to enable detailed annotation of sequence variation. The annotation includes SO terms for the type of sequence alteration, the genomic features that are changed and the effect of the alteration. The SO maintains and updates the specification and provides the underlying ontologicial structure. METHODS A requirements ana...

Prostate cancer is one of the commonest cancers in the world. Dynamic contrast enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) provides an opportunity for non-invasive diagnosis, staging, and treatment monitoring. Quantitative analysis of DCE-MRI relies on determination of an accurate arterial input function (AIF). Although several methods for automated AIF detection have been proposed in literature, none are optimized...

The geographic information system industry would benefit from flexible automated systems capable of extracting linear structures from satellite imagery. Quadratic snakes allow global interactions between points along a contour, and are well suited to segmentation of linear structures such as roads. However, a single quadratic snake is unable to extract disconnected road networks and enclosed re...

Accurate delineation of object borders is highly desirable in echocardiography, especially at the left ventricle. Among other modelbased techniques, active contours (or snakes) provide a unique and powerful approach to image analysis. In this work, we propose the use of a new external energy for a gradient vector flow (GVF) snake, being the optical flow of a moving sequence (modeling the mechan...