Abstract:Active contour model is an important method for image segmentation. It combines underlying information with highlevel prior knowledge to achieve automatic segmentation for complex objects. Active contour model has been developed greatly in theory research and application, since it was proposed twenty years ago. This paper reviewed the development process of active contour model at first and describes the classical parametric active contour models and geometric active contour models, and presents briefly new hybrid active contour models as well as fast solution algorithms. After that, the relationship between these two kinds of models through theory basis, performance, efficiency and applications were introduced. The future prospect of active contour model was discussed as well.
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