A statistical model is presented that combines the registration of an atlas with the segmentation of magnetic resonance images. We use an Expectation Maximization-based algorithm to find a solution within the model, which simultaneously estimates image artifacts, anatomical labelmaps, and a structure-dependent hierarchical mapping from the atlas to the image space. The algorithm produces segmentations for brain tissues as well as their substructures. We demonstrate the approach on a set of 22 magnetic resonance images. On this set of images, the new approach performs significantly better than similar methods which sequentially apply registration and segmentation.

Feature space clustering is a popular approach to image segmentation, in which a feature vector of local properties (such as intensity, texture or motion) is computed at each pixel. The feature space is then clustered, and each pixel is labeled with the cluster that contains its feature vector. A major limitation of this approach is that feature space clusters generally lack spatial coherence (i.e., they do not correspond to a compact grouping of pixels). In this paper, we propose a segmentation algorithm that operates simultaneously in feature space and in image space. We define an energy function over both a set of clusters and a labeling of pixels with clusters. In our framework, a pixel is labeled with a single cluster (rather than, for example, a distribution

We propose a variational framework for the integration multiple competing shape priors into level set based segmentation schemes.

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Abstract. High angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) permits the computation of water molecule displacement probabilities over a sphere of possible displacement directions. This probability is often referred to as the orientation distribution function (ODF). In this paper we present a novel model for the diffusion ODF namely, a mixture of von Mises-Fisher (vMF) distributions. Our model is compact in that it requires very few variables to model complicated ODF geometries which occur specifically in the presence of heterogeneous nerve fiber orientation. We also present a Riemannian geometric framework for computing intrinsic distances, in closed-form, and performing interpolation between ODFs represented by vMF mixtures. As an example, we apply the intrinsic distance within a hidden Markov measure field segmentation scheme. We present results of this segmentation for HARDI images of rat spinal cords – which show distinct regions within both the white and gray matter. It should be noted that such a fine level of parcellation of the gray and white matter cannot be obtained either from contrast MRI scans or Diffusion Tensor MRI scans. We validate the segmentation algorithm by applying it to synthetic data sets where the ground truth is known. 2 1

This paper introduces a formulation which allows using wavelet-based priors for image segmentation. This formulation can be used in supervised, unsupervised, or semisupervised modes, and with any probabilistic observation model (intensity, multispectral, texture). Our main goal is to exploit the well-known ability of wavelet-based priors to model piece-wise smoothness (which underlies state-of-theart methods for denoising, coding, and restoration) and the availability of fast algorithms for wavelet-based processing. The main obstacle to using wavelet-based priors for segmentation is that they’re aimed at representing real values, rather than discrete labels, as needed for segmentation. This difficulty is sidestepped by the introduction of realvalued hidden fields, to which the labels are probabilistically related. These hidden fields, being unconstrained and real-valued, can be given any type of spatial prior, such as one based on wavelets. Under this model, Bayesian MAP segmentation is carried out by a (generalized) EM algorithm. Experiments on synthetic and real data testify for the adequacy of the approach. 1.

A new hierarchical Bayesian model is proposed for image segmentation based on Gaussian mixture models (GMM) with a prior enforcing spatial smoothness. According to this prior, the local differences of the contextual mixing proportions (i.e. the probabilities of class labels) are Student’s t-distributed. The generative properties of the Student’s t-pdf allow this prior to impose smoothness and simultaneously model the edges between the segments of the image. A maximum a posteriori (MAP) expectationmaximization (EM) based algorithm is used for Bayesian inference. An important feature of this algorithm is that all the parameters are automatically estimated from the data in closed form. Numerical experiments are presented that demonstrate the superiority of the proposed model for image segmentation as compared to standard GMM-based approaches and to GMM segmentation techniques with ”standard” spatial smoothness constraints. 1.

We present a novel spatially constrained generative model and an EM algorithm for model-based image segmentation. The generative model assumes that the unobserved class labels of neighboring pixels in the image are generated by prior distributions with similar parameters, where similarity is defined by entropic quantities relating the neighboring priors. In order to estimate model parameters from observations, we derive a spatially constrained EM algorithm that iteratively maximizes a lower bound on the data log-likelihood, where the penalty term is data-dependent. Our algorithm is very easy to implement, and is similar to the standard EM algorithm for Gaussian mixtures with the main difference that the labels posteriors are ‘smoothed’ over pixels between each E- and M-step by a standard image filter. Experiments on synthetic and real images show that our algorithm achieves competitive segmentation results compared to other Markov-based methods, and is in general faster.

This article proposes a technique to animate a Chinese style painting given its image. We first extract descriptions of the brush strokes that hypothetically produced it. The key to the extraction process is the use of a brush stroke library, which is obtained by digitizing single brush strokes drawn by an experienced artist. The steps in our extraction technique are first to segment the input image, then to find the best set of brush strokes that fit the regions, and, finally, to refine these strokes to account for local appearance. We model a single brush stroke using its skeleton and contour, and we characterize texture variation within each stroke by sampling perpendicularly along its skeleton. Once these brush descriptions have been obtained, the painting can be animated at the brush stroke level. In this article, we focus on Chinese paintings with relatively sparse strokes. The animation is produced using a graphical application we developed. We present several animations of real paintings using our technique.

Abstract. This paper presents a new Bayesian approach to hyperspectral image segmentation that boosts the performance of the discriminative classifiers. This is achieved by combining class densities based on discriminative classifiers with a Multi-Level Logistic Markov-Gibs prior. This density favors neighbouring labels of the same class. The adopted discriminative classifier is the Fast Sparse Multinomial Regression. The discrete optimization problem one is led to is solved efficiently via graph cut tools. The effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated, with simulated and real AVIRIS images, in two directions: 1) to improve the classification performance and 2) to decrease the size of the training sets. 1