Unified approach to snakes, elastic nets and Kohonen maps

Snakes, elastic nets and Kohonen networks are well known algorithms which were developed in different contexts. However, these algorithms share common features allowing one to ask what is the relationship among them and suggesting their use in problems which have traditionally been tackled by only one of them. The paper addresses the problem of edge linking and proposes a new class of nonlinear recursive algorithms, based on a general cost function, which includes snakes, Kohonen maps, and elastic nets as special cases. This class provides an unified framework for several existing algorithms in pattern recognition and active contours and allows the design of new recursive schemes