Abstract: Despite the promising results of numerous applications, the hitherto proposed snake techniques share some common problems: snake attraction by spurious edge points, snake degeneration (shrinking and attening), convergence and stability of the deformation process, snake initialization and local determination of the parameters of elasticity. We argue here that these problems can be solved only when all the snake aspects are considered. The snakes proposed here implement a new potential eld and external force in order to provide a deformation convergence, attraction by both near and far edges as well as snake behaviour selective according to the edge orientation. Furthermore, we conclude that in the case of model-based seg mentation, the internal force should include structural information about the expected snake shape. Experiments using this kind of snakes for segmenting bones in complex hand radiographs show a signicant improvement.

Abstract: This paper develops a formalism by which an estimate for the upper and lower bounds for the elasticity parameters for a snake can be obtained. Objects different in size and shape give rise to different bounds. The bounds can be obtained based on an analysis of the shape of the object of interest. Experiments on synthetic images show a good correlation between the estimated behaviour of the snake and the one actually observed. Experiments on real X-ray images show that the parameters for optimal segmentation lie within the estimated bounds.

Abstract: Deformable models have recently been accepted as a standard technique to segment different features in facial images. Despite they give a good approximation of the salient features in a facial image, the resulting shapes of the segmentation process seem somewhat artificial with respect to the natural feature shapes. In this paper we show that active contour models (in particular, rubber snakes) give more close and natural representation of the detected feature shape. Besides, using snakes for facial segmentation frees us from the problem of determination of the numerous weigths of deformable models. Another advantage of rubber snakes is their reduced computational cost. Our experiments using rubber snakes for segmentation of facial snapshots have shown a significant improvement compared to deformable models.

Abstract: This paper proposes a guidance in the process of choosing and using the parameters of elasticity of a snake in order to obtain a precise segmentation. A new two step procedure is defined based on upper and lower bounds on the parameters. Formulas, by which these bounds can be calculated for real images where parts of the contour may be missing, are presented. Experiments on segmentation of bone structures in X-ray images have verified the usefulness of the new procedure.

Abstract: L’anàlisi de documents té com a objectiu la interpretació automàtica de documents impresos sobre paper, amb la finalitat d’obtenir una descripció simbòlica d’aquests, que permeti el seu emmagatzemament i posterior tractament computacional. Les tècniques basades en grafs relacionals d’atributs permeten representar de manera compacta la informació continguda en dibuixos lineals i mitjançant mecanismes d’isomorfisme entre grafs, reconèixer-hi certes estructures i d’aquesta manera, interpretar el document. En aquest treball es dóna una visió general de les tènciques de grafs aplicades al reconeixement visual d’objectes en problemes d’anàlisi de documents. Aquestes tècniques s’il·lustren amb un exemple de reconeixement de plànols dibuixats a mà alçada. Finalment es proposa la utilització de tècniques de Hough com a mecanisme per accelerar el procés de reconeixement aplicant un cert coneixement sobre el domini en el que es treballa