Elastic map : interactive image segmentation using a few seed-points

Over the past two decades interactive methods for clinical and biomedical image segmentation have been investigated since the pioneering work of Live-Wire, Live-Lane [17] and Intelligent Scissors [1]. Fully automatic image segmentation is essential for quantitative analysis but remains an unsolved problem, so user driven interactive methods continue to be a powerful alternative when extremely precise segmentation is required. However, manual methods although routinely used are tedious, time-consuming, expensive, inconsistent between experts and error prone. In semi-supervised interactive segmentation the goal is for the user to provide a small amount of partial information or hints for an automatic algorithm to use in order to produce accurate boundaries suitable for the user. The coupled interaction between the user provided input and the semi-supervised segmentation algorithm should be minimal and robust. Commonly used drawing tools for interactive segmentation interfaces include active contour or boundary drawing, scribbles to identify foreground and background regions, and rectangles to outline the object of interest. But interactive segmentation using a sparse set of seed-points has not been widely investigated. In this work we investigate the use of sparse seed point-based for interactive image segmentation task. We have also proposed a new regression based framework, making use of Elastic Body Splines (EBS) to perform interactive image segmentation. Elastic Body Splines belonging to the family of 3D splines were recently introduced to capture tissue deformations within a physical model-based approach for non-rigid biomedical image registration [18]. ElasticMap model the displacement of points in a 3D homogeneous isotropic elastic body subject to forces. We propose