Vector bundle constraint for particle swarm optimization and its application to active contour modeling

Active contour modeling (ACM) has been shown to be a powerful method in object boundary extraction. In this paper, a new ACM based on vector bundle constraint for particle swarm optimization (VBCPSO-ACM) is proposed. Different from the traditional particle swarm optimization (PSO), in the process of velocity update, a vector bundle is predefined for each particle and velocity update of the particle is restricted to its bundle. Applying this idea to ACM, control points on the contour are treated as particles in PSO and the evolution of the contour is driven by the particles. Meanwhile, global searching is shifted to local searching in ACM by decreasing the number of neighbors and inertia. In addition, the addition and deletion of particles on the active contour make this new model possible for representing the real boundaries more precisely. The proposed VBCPSO-ACM can avoid self-intersection during contour evolving and also extract inhomogeneous boundaries. The simulation results proved its great performance in performing contour extraction.