Active contours with extended neighborhood generalized gradient vector flow external force

A novel external force called extended neighborhood generalized gradient vector flow ( ENGGVF ) for active contours is proposed in this paper. The proposed ENGGVF snake incorporates weighting functions and takes the gradient vector flow (GVF) just as a convolution operation with extended neighborhood Laplacian operator mask. Consequently, the ENGGVF snake would provide much better segmentation than GVF snake in terms of deep and narrow concavity convergence, reduced computational cost and enlarged capture range while maintaining other desirable properties of GVF snake such as initialization insensitivity and U-shape concavity convergence. We demonstrate the advantages on synthetic and real images.