An Initialization of Active Contour Models(Snakes) using Convex Hull Approximation

The Snakes and GVF used to find object edges dynamically have assigned their initial contour arbitrarily. If the initial contours are located in the neighboring regions of object edges, Snakes and GVF can be close to the true boundary. If not, these will likely to converge to the wrong result. Therefore, this paper proposes a new initialization of Snakes and GVF using convex hull approximation, which initializes the vertex of Snakes and GVF as a convex polygonal contour near object edges. In simulation result, we show that the proposed algorithm has a faster convergence to object edges than the existing methods. Our algorithm also has the advantage of extracting whole edges in real images.