In order to solve the problem that the region-based active contour model is sensitive to the initial contour position, the convergence is poor, and the active contour model can not obtain good segmentation results when segmenting complex background images and severe intensity inhomogeneous images. In this paper, an active contour model which combines Local Image Fitting (LIF) and Difference of Gaussian (DoG) operator energy for image segmentation is proposed. Firstly, an optimal DoG operator is obtained by using the edge energy term, it can enhance the edge while smoothing inhomogeneous regions. Then, using the DoG energy term which is obtained in the first step and the LIF energy term to construct the total function energy terms. In this process, the regularization term is also established, it can control the smoothness of evolution curve, avoiding over-segmentation and re-initialization step. Finally, the variational method and gradient descent flow method are adopted to minimize the total energy functional for segmentation. Compared with other region-based active contour models, the experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve a better segmentation performance with less iterations and high calculation efficiency while segmenting the synthetic and real images with intensity inhomogeneity. © 2019 Elsevier GmbH