Before revision:  In this paper, we use characteristic functions to implicitly approximate the contours, propose a new representation to the GAC and derive an efficient algorithm termed as the iterative convolution-thresholding method (ICTM).
After revision:  In this paper, we use characteristic functions to implicitly approximate the contours, propose a new representation to the geodesic active contours and derive an efficient algorithm termed as the iterative convolution-thresholding method (ICTM).