Fast globally supervised segmentation by active contours with shape and texture descriptors

We present a new globally supervised segmentation method in the characteristic function framework based on an active contours (AC) model incorporating both shape prior and texture descriptors. The shape prior descriptor is formulated as the traditional Legendre moment and the texture descriptor as a linear combination of local inside/outside texture descriptor. Using these two descriptors, the AC energy incorporates both learned textures and training shapes. This formulation has two main advantages: 1) by discriminating independently the foreground/background textures. 2) by incorporating both the learned inside/outside texture and the training shape. The trade-off between inside and outside texture descriptor is ensured by balancing descriptor. We illustrate the performance of our segmentation algorithm using some challenging textured images.