Active contour models: application to oral lesion detection in color images

This paper presents the application of active contour models (Snakes) for the segmentation of oral lesions in medical color images acquired from the visual part of the light spectrum. The aim is to assist the clinical expert in locating potentially cancerous cases for further analysis (e.g. classification of cancerous vs. non-cancerous lesions). In order to apply the conventional Snake formulation, color images were converted into single-band images. A number of different single-bands were evaluated including those resulting from the original and normalized RGB, perceptual HSI space, I/sub 1/I/sub 2/I/sub 3/, and the Fisher discriminant function. Examples of Snake segmentation results of oral lesions are presented.