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Segmentation of Stochastic Images using ... - Jacobs University

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2.5 Why is Classical Image Processing not Enough?<br />

Figure 2.9: <strong>Segmentation</strong> <strong>of</strong> an object without sharp edges <strong>using</strong> the Chan-Vese approach. In red, we<br />

show the steady-state solution <strong>of</strong> the Chan-Vese segmentation method initialized with a<br />

small circle inside the object.<br />

<strong>of</strong> images and from the perspective <strong>of</strong> segmentation <strong>of</strong> single images, there is no need for new concepts.<br />

Nevertheless, the approaches presented in this chapter have drawbacks regarding robustness<br />

with respect to noise, reproducibility, and error propagation. The next section investigates this.<br />

2.5 Why is Classical Image Processing not Enough?<br />

In the last sections, we introduced five segmentation methods and showed that all these segmentation<br />

methods perform well on some selected medical images. Besides the segmentation <strong>of</strong> single images,<br />

a segmentation method has to fulfill other features not presented so far:<br />

• It is unclear how robust the methods are with respect to image noise.<br />

• The robustness <strong>of</strong> the methods for parameter changes and different initializations is unclear.<br />

• Propagating error information through these algorithms is hard, i.e. if information about measurement<br />

errors at the image acquisition is available, it is impossible to propagate this information<br />

through the segmentation to get segmentation results containing the error information.<br />

We organized this section as follows: First, we give an introduction to image noise, show how the<br />

image noise influences the image quality for different acquisition modalities and how image noise<br />

is modeled mathematically. Then, we investigate the noise robustness <strong>of</strong> the presented segmentation<br />

methods, and finally, we discuss error propagation in classical image segmentation methods.<br />

2.5.1 Image Noise<br />

Image noise is a serious problem when dealing with medical images and images from digital cameras.<br />

Different noise sources degrade the images. A principal problem <strong>of</strong> image acquisition devices is the<br />

noise due to the random arrival <strong>of</strong> the photons. Light or X-ray emission is a stochastic process [44].<br />

In addition, the instrumentation noise due to thermal effects in the acquisition device degrades the<br />

image quality. Further sources <strong>of</strong> image noise are the quantization noise due to the conversion<br />

from analog to digital signals and the compression process for the images, if any. Physical effects<br />

influencing the path <strong>of</strong> the photons, like blurring, diffraction, and scattering, cause image noise, too.<br />

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