Spatial database updating using active contours for multispectral images: application with Landsat 7

This paper presents a fully automated approach for area detection and delineation based on multispectral images and features from a topographic database. The vectors residing in the database are refined using active contours (snakes) according to updated information provided by the multispectral images. The conventional methods of defining the external energy guiding the deformation of the snake based on: (1) statistical measures; or (2) gradient-based boundary finding is often corrupted by poor image quality. Here a method to integrate the two approaches is proposed using an estimation of the maximum a posteriori (MAP) segmentation in an effort to form a unified approach that is robust to noise and poor edges. We further propose to improve the accuracy of the resulting boundary location and update of the snake topology. A number of experiments are performed on both synthetic and LANDSAT 7 images to evaluate the approach.