Interactively multiphase image segmentation based on variational formulation and graph cuts

In this paper the multiple piecewise constant (MPC) active contour model is extended to deal with multiphase case. This proposed multiphase model can be effectively optimized by solving the minimum cuts problem of a specially devised multilayer graph. Based on the proposed energy functional and its graph cuts optimization, an interactively multiphase partition method for image segmentation is presented. The user places some scribbles with different colors on the image according to the practical application demand and each group of scribbles with the same color corresponds to a potential image region. The distribution of each region can be learned from the input scribbles with some particular color. Then the corresponding multilayer graph can be constructed and its minimum cuts can be computed to determine the segmentation result of the image. Numerical experiments show that the proposed interactively multiphase segmentation method can accurately segment the image into different regions according to the input scribbles with different color.