Locally regularized snakes through smoothing B-spline filtering

In this paper we propose a locally regularized snake based on smoothing-spline filtering. The proposed algorithm associates this regularization process to a force equilibrium scheme leading the snake's deformation. The regularization level is controlled through a unique parameter that can vary along the contour: It provides a locally regularized smoothing B-snake that offers a powerful framework to introduce prior knowledge. We illustrate the snake behavior on MRI images, with global and local regularization.