Feng, Z. L.Yin, J. W.Chen, G.Liu, YangDong, J. X.N. Correia and J. Jorge and T. Chambel and Z. Pan2014-01-262014-01-2620043-905673-17-71812-7118http://dx.doi.org/10.2312/EGMM/MM04/153-162Automatic pattern segmentation of jacquard images is a challenging task due to the complexity of the images. Active contour models have become popular for finding the contours of a pattern with a complex shape. However, these models have many limitations on the pattern segmentation of jacquard images in the presence of noise. In this paper, a robust algorithm based on the Mumford-Shah model is proposed for the segmentation of noisy jacquard images. We discretize the Mumford-Shah model on piecewise lin-ear finite element spaces to yield greater stability and higher accuracy. A novel iterative relaxation algo-rithm for the numerical solving of the discrete version of the Mumford-Shah model is presented. During each iteration, we first refine and reorganize an adaptive triangular mesh to characterize the essential contour structure of a pattern. Then, we apply the quasi-Newton algorithm to find the absolute minimum of the discrete version of the model at the current iteration. Experimental results on synthetic and jac-quard images have shown the effectiveness and robustness of the algorithm.