[Insight-users] Re: Question about CurvesLevelSet

[Raul San Jose Estepar]

Hi Luca,

CurvesLevelSets is intended to implements Lorigo's method to the best of 
my knowledge.
As you pointed out the method is deeply based on Geodesic Active 
Contours, however the smoothing term is done by minimal curvature 
instead of mean curvature.

The minimal curvature process is implemented in itkLevelSetFunction 
(method ComputeMinimalCurvature). The  minimal curvature term can be 
turned on with UseMinimalCurvatureOn. This is done in 
itkCurvesLevelSetFunction.h (line 118). The fact of having the minimal 
curvature computation in itkLevelSetsFunction is to allow other methods 
to use this resource. LevelSet methods devise to segment tiny or tubular 
structures may prefer this curvature term, as can be your case.
The minimal curvature is computed by projecting the Hessian matrix in 
the plane orthogonal to the levelset and then computing eigenvalues.
The reason of having  vnl/algo/vnl_symmetric_eigensystem.h in 
itkCurvesLevelSetFunction.txx is for legacy given that initially the 
minimal curvature was computed here. Later on it was decided to pass 
this functionality to the parent class. Thanks for pointing out the 
unnecessary of those header files.

I hope this help and let me know if you have further comments.

/Raul

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject:
> [Insight-users] Contributions for a few enhancements
> From:
> lucantiga at softhome.net
> Date:
> Wed, 15 Dec 2004 11:11:08 +0100
> To:
> insight-users at itk.org
>
> To:
> insight-users at itk.org
>
>
>Hi Louis,
> long message ahead!
> I've got a few enhancements I'd like to contribute to ITK. I describe
>them below. All the changes are backward-compatible. If you're interested, 
>I can provide you with the code.
> 
>1. GeodesicActiveContourLevelSetFunction::CalculateAdvectionImage now
> uses GradientRecursiveGaussianImageFilter to perform derivatives. This
> is fine, but sometimes, when you have tiny objects like small vessels, 
> advection-driven level sets collapse because of the Gaussian filtering
> introduced in performing derivatives. The enhacement in this class is
> to use GradientImageFilter to perform derivatives when DerivativeSigma
> is set to zero. 
> 
>2. I've extended FastMarchingImageFilter to do two additional things:
> a. to accept a set of TargetPoints in input. After one or all
> (depending on user's choice) the target points are reached, the
> evolution stops. A variable TargetOffset controls how much time after
> targets are reached the evolution must stop (so to ensure a smooth level 
> set corresponding to the time the target is reached).
> b. to optionally compute the upwind gradient vector each time a Trial 
> point becomes Accepted and to store it in a GradientImage. This
> basically generates a vector field of reciprocal of velocities (i.e. the
> argument of the modulus in the Eikonal equation). It's not the same
> as computing the gradient with a GradientImageFilter since here we
> use upwind finite differences and we only do it for accepted points.
>
>3. I wrote a new class which I find very useful for level sets
> initialization. It's called CollidingFrontsImageFilter. Given two sets
> of seeds, the filter propagates two fronts with the
> FastMarchingImageFilter extension described above with the input
> image as speed, computing upwind gradients and stopping when the other set is met. 
> A scalar product between the two upwind gradient images is then taken.
> The region where such scalar product is negative (and optionally flood-fill
> connected to the seeds) is the region where the two fronts collide one 
> against the other. In ascii-art: .)))) ((((. that is, the region
> "between" the two points. The regions where the scalar product is
> positive can be ignored, in ascii-art: ((((.   .))))
> This is really handy, for example, if you have a bright blood image of a
> branching vessel. Placing two seeds in two points of the vascular
> tree, the filter will extract the region comprised between the
> seeds ignoring side branches (because both fronts will seep into side
> branches in the same direction, i.e. positive scalar product).
> Morevoer, if snr is good, both fronts will exit the vessel boundary
> in the same direction (since the front there is slow), so one doesn't
> even need to set propagation speed to zero outside the vessel.
> 
>Just let me know if you're interested. If not, I'll just release these
>classes with my library (and maybe move them to itk at a later time)
>
>Last, a question: 
> the code for CurvesLevelSetFunction is basically the same 
> as GeodesicActiveContourLevelSetFunction. However, Curves is the name of Lorigo's 
> method to compute codimension-two geodesic active contours, which is
> not what the class does. Couriously, the txx file includes
> "vnl/algo/vnl_symmetric_eigensystem.h" which is what Lorigo's method
> needs for codimension-two geodesic active contours.
> Was CurvesLevelSetFunction originally supposed to implement
> codimension-two geodesic active contour?
>
>Sorry for the lengthy message!
>
>Luca
>
>
>  
>

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