A novel shape based segmentation approach is proposed by modifying the external energy component of a deformable model. The proposed external energy component depends not only on the gray level of the images but also on the shape information which is obtained from the signed distance maps of objects in a given data set. The gray level distribution and the signed distance map of the points inside and outside the object of interest are accurately estimated by modelling the empirical density function with a linear combination of discrete Gaussians (LCDG) with positive and negative components. Experimental results on the segmentation of the kidneys from low-contrast DCE-MRI and on the segmentation of the ventricles from brain MRI's show how the approach is accurate in segmenting 2-D and 3-D data sets. The 2D results for the kidney segmentation have been validated by a radiologist and the 3D results of the ventricle segmentation have been validated with a geometrical phantom.