SplineSnake

An ImageJ Plugin for Image Segmentation using Closed Snake (Active Contour)

Author: Mathews Jacob

corpuscallossam

Description

SplineSnake is an implementation of the snake algorithm for the segmentation of graylevel images. The snake is a spline curve that is attracted by image information to the object boundaries. The formulation ensures that the extracted  boundary is smooth. The implementation is based on [1].


Download

This distribution is dated March 27, 2003. It includes the precompiled class files. Please contact me if you require the source files.
To install, extract the "SplineSnake" folder to the "Plugins" directory of ImageJ. You need to restart ImageJ for the plugin to be active. Please drop me a line if you are successfully using SplineSnake.

Using the Plugin

Open the image using ImageJ and launch the plugin. To work on a new image, one has to exit SplineSnake and restart the plugin.

Addpoint
Add points: Click on the image to start the curve input. Double click or click on the first(red point) to close the curve
deletepoint

Delete points: Click on the knot to delete it.
deleteallpoints
Delete all: Clear everything.
addconstraint
Add constraints: Click on the point through which the curve should pass through.
deleteconstraint
Delete constraint: Click on the constraint point to delete it. Double click the button to clear all constraints
preferences
Preferences: See below for explanations of the parameters.
snake
Snake: Start the snake algorithm.
select
Accept: Accept the final snake (red) as the initialization.
stack
Stack: Reserved for future use on image stacks
file
Save to File: Saves the current snake to a file.
exit
Exit SplineSnake: Exit the SplineSnake to ImageJ
zoom  
Zoom.

The snake parameters and their explanations are given below. The important terms (the ones you may want to play with) are marked in red.

prefdialog

The parameters on the left are the ones used during the curve initialization. They are
The ones on the right are used by the snake. The current parameter values may be saved to avoid entering them each time. The saved values can be recovered by pressing the "Default" button.

References

[1] M. Jacob, T. Blu, M. Unser, "A Unifying Approach and Interface for Spline-Based Snakes " , Proceedings of the SPIE International Symposium on Medical Imaging: Image Processing, San Diego CA, USA, February 17-22, 2001, vol. 4322, Part I, pp. 340-347.

[2] M. Jacob, T. Blu, M. Unser , "Efficient energies and algorithms for parametric snakes", Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.

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Last updated on March 27, 2003.