An efficient algorithm for multiphase image segmentation with intensity bias correction

This paper presents a variational model for simultaneous multiphase segmentation and intensity bias estimation for images corrupted by strong noise and intensity inhomogeneity. Since the pixel intensities are not reliable samples for region statistics due to the presence of noise and intensity bias, we use local information based on the joint density within image patches to perform image partition. Hence, the pixel intensity has a multiplicative distribution structure. Then, the maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) principle with those pixel density functions generates the model. To tackle the computational problem of the resultant nonsmooth nonconvex minimization, we relax the constraint on the characteristic functions of partition regions, and apply primal-dual alternating gradient projections to construct a very efficient numerical algorithm. We show that all the variables have closed-form solutions in each iteration, and the computation complexity is very low. In particular, the algorithm involves only regular convolutions and pointwise projections onto the unit ball and canonical simplex. Numerical tests on a variety of images demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is robust, stable, and attains significant improvements on accuracy and efficiency over the state-of-the-arts.