Geodesic active contour, inertia and initial speed

A new force field for geodesic active contours, called inertia, is proposed in this paper. Based on analyzing the evolution process of geodesic active contours and constructing extension velocities in level set methods, it is found that geodesic active contours can inherit their evolution velocities from the previous time step and have the tendency to keep their original evolution state through integrating inertia into them. As an useful complementarity to the force field family for geodesic active contours, inertia force is constructed on the base of gradient vector flow external force field. Experimental results reveal that, compared with gradient vector flow geodesic active contours, geodesic active contours integrated with inertia and gradient vector flow can enter into long indentions and special-shape concavities. Furthermore, they are more tolerant toward initial positions under the action of inertia and initial speeds.