Spline-based framework for interactive segmentation in biomedical imaging

Active contours constitute a computationally attractive framework for image segmentation. In this paper, we describe a fully parametric design that relies on B-spline bases and is specified by control points on the image. Our technique yields successful segmentation results even for challenging datasets where object contours are not well-defined. We can achieve this because our parametric approach uses few parameters and allows us to constrain the topology of the curve. We provide the details for an efficient implementation and discuss different design alternatives. This work comes with a companion software that gives the end user full control over the snakes. We demonstrate the features of our software which includes an interactive interface where the user can manipulate the position of control points by simple mouse actions.