  In this paper, we introduce a novel parametric method for segmentation of
three-dimensional images. We consider a piecewise constant version of the
Mumford-Shah and the Chan-Vese functionals and perform a region-based
segmentation of 3D image data. An evolution law is derived from energy
minimization problems which push the surfaces to the boundaries of 3D objects
in the image. We propose a parametric scheme which describes the evolution of
parametric surfaces. An efficient finite element scheme is proposed for a
numerical approximation of the evolution equations. Since standard parametric
methods cannot handle topology changes automatically, an efficient method is
presented to detect, identify and perform changes in the topology of the
surfaces. One main focus of this paper are the algorithmic details to handle
topology changes like splitting and merging of surfaces and change of the genus
of a surface. Different artificial images are studied to demonstrate the
ability to detect the different types of topology changes. Finally, the
parametric method is applied to segmentation of medical 3D images.
