Contour Flow Constraint: Preserving Global Shape Similarity for Deep Learning based Image Segmentation

For effective image segmentation, it is crucial to employ constraints informed by prior knowledge about the characteristics of the areas to be segmented to yield favorable segmentation outcomes. However, the existing methods have primarily focused on priors of specific properties or shapes, lacking consideration of the general global shape similarity from a Contour Flow (CF) perspective. Furthermore, naturally integrating this contour flow prior image segmentation model into the activation functions of deep convolutional networks through mathematical methods is currently unexplored. In this paper, we establish a concept of global shape similarity based on the premise that two shapes exhibit comparable contours. Furthermore, we mathematically derive a contour flow constraint that ensures the preservation of global shape similarity. We propose two implementations to integrate the constraint with deep neural networks. Firstly, the constraint is converted to a shape loss, which can be seamlessly incorporated into the training phase for any learning-based segmentation framework. Secondly, we add the constraint into a variational segmentation model and derive its iterative schemes for solution. The scheme is then unrolled to get the architecture of the proposed CFSSnet. Validation experiments on diverse datasets are conducted on classic benchmark deep network segmentation models. The results indicate a great improvement in segmentation accuracy and shape similarity for the proposed shape loss, showcasing the general adaptability of the proposed loss term regardless of specific network architectures. CFSSnet shows robustness in segmenting noise-contaminated images, and inherent capability to preserve global shape similarity.