%0 Conference Paper %B International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR) %D 2012 %T A Multi-Layer Phase Field Model for Extracting Multiple Near-Circular Objects %A Csaba Molnar %A Zoltan Kato %A Ian Jermyn %E Jan-Olof Eklundh %E Yuichi Ohta %E Steven Tanimoto %X

This paper proposes a functional that assigns low `energy' to sets of subsets of the image domain consisting of a number of possibly overlapping near-circular regions of approximately a given radius: a `gas of circles'. The model can be used as a prior for object extraction whenever the objects conform to the `gas of circles' geometry, e.g. cells in biological images. Configurations are represented by a multi-layer phase field. Each layer has an associated function, regions being defined by thresholding. Intra-layer interactions assign low energy to configurations consisting of non-overlapping near-circular regions, while overlapping regions are represented in separate layers. Inter-layer interactions penalize overlaps. Here we present a theoretical and experimental analysis of the model.

 

%B International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR) %I IEEE %C Tsukuba, Japan %P 1427 - 1430 %8 Nov 2012 %@ 978-1-4673-2216-4 %G eng %9 Conference paper %M 13324819