Non-rigid Image Registration Using Graph-cuts

Introduction This paper presents an algorithm for non-rigid registration formulated as a discrete labeling problem. The authors note that the two major contemporary works for image registration had inherent flaws - Free-Form Deformation (FFD) based model was crippled by the choice of the set of control points to represent the deformation, while Demons Based Method did not penalize large displacements of pixels and was highly sensitive to local artifacts. The authors demonstrate the proposed algorithm’s superior performance for 2D and 3D registration compared to the two aforementioned algorithms. ...

October 24, 2018 · 3 min · Kumar Abhishek

Graph Cuts for Image Segmentation

Introduction This paper presents a graph cut approach to the image segmentation task. Considering the image to be a directed graph with two nodes representing the source (object) and the sink (background), the authors propose a combinatorial optimization framework for image segmentation using $s/t$ graph cuts. This is the first global optimization object extraction technique that is extensible to beyond 2-D images. ...

October 10, 2018 · 4 min · Kumar Abhishek

Interactive Live-Wire Boundary Extraction

Introduction This paper presents a novel interactive tool for efficient and reproducible boundary extraction with minimal user input. Despite the user not being very accuracte with the manual marking of the seed points, the algorithm snaps the boundary to the nearest strong object edge. Unlike active contour models where the user is unaware of how the final boundary will look like after energy minimization (which, if unsatisfactory, requires the entire process to be repeated again), this algorithm is interactive and therefore the user is aware of the “live-wire boundary snapping”. Moreover, “boundary cooling” and “on-the-fly training” are two novel contributions of the paper which help reduce user input while maintaining the stability of the boundary. ...

October 10, 2018 · 4 min · Kumar Abhishek

Random Walks for Image Segmentation

Introduction This paper presents a novel multi-label and interactive image segmentation algorithm that draws analogies to electric network circuits solutions from electrical engineering. Treating the image as a purely discrete object - a graph, this algorithm can be extended to surface meshes or space-variant images as well. The paper demonstrates the proposed algorithm’s speed and robustness to noise and weak boundaries while also being able to avoid the “small cut” solutions. ...

October 10, 2018 · 4 min · Kumar Abhishek