Accurate blemish detection with active contour models

This paper presents a novel image analysis scheme for accurate detection of fruit blemishes. The detection procedure consists of two steps: initial segmentation and refinement. In the first step, blemishes are coarsely segmented out with a flooding algorithm and in the second step an active contour model, i.e. a snake algorithm, is applied to refine the segmentation so that the localization and size accuracy of detected blemishes is improved. The concept and the formulation of the snake algorithm are briefly introduced and then the refinement procedure is described. The initial tests for sample apple images have shown very promising results.