The disadvantages are:

- It must be known where to start the search process.

The active contour must start to contract or to expand

in the neighborhood of the object that is about to be

recognized. You must have a clue where to start.

But the advantage is that it's easy to follow an object

on subsequent similar images.

- Energy contributions: energy types must be identified and

adjusted for specific figures and image classes, and will

probably cease to work for different image classes.

- Artefacts might be recognized as edges.

- Crossings of edges cause alternative adaptions of

the contour model.

- Size of the searched figure: if you're searching for

an oval as the model of a face, the active contour

might adapt on an ear, because it's also an oval.

Regards,

Joachim

Thanks Joachim

Active contour-based methods are also slow in comparison to other segmentation methods such as graph cuts or convex-max flow based methods.