OncoSpineSeg: A Software Tool for a Manual Segmentation of Computed Tomography of the Spine on Cancer Patients

The organ most commonly affected by metastatic cancer is the skeleton, and spine is the site where it causes the highest morbidity. Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) for detecting and assessing metastatic disease in bone or other spine disorders can assist physicians to perform their decision-making tasks. A precise segmentation of the spine is important as a first stage in any automatic diagnosis task. However, it is a challenging problem to segment correctly an affected spine, and it is a crucial step to assess quantitatively the results of segmentation by comparing them with the results of a manual segmentation, reviewed by one experienced radiologist. This chapter presents the design of a MATLAB-based software for the manual segmentation of the spine. The software tool has a simple and easy to use interface, and it works with either computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). A typical workflow includes loading the image volume, creating multi-planar reconstructions, manually contouring the vertebrae, spinal lesions, intervertebral discs and spinal canal with availability of different segmentation tools, classification of the bone into healthy bone, osteolytic metastases, osteoblastic metastases or mixed lesions, being also possible to classify an object as a false-positive and a 3D reconstruction of the segmented objects

A Novel Approach for the Visualisation and Progression Tracking of Metastatic Bone Disease

Metastatic bone disease (MBD) is a common secondary feature of cancer that can cause significant complications, including severe pain and death. Current methods of diagnosis require a highly trained radiologist capable of interpreting medical images and recognising the sites of MBD. These medical images are often noisy, two dimensional, greyscale and usually have a poor resolution. In order to help assist with these issues, several studies have shown that computer aided methods can locate MBD within medical images. However these methods are limited in scope, accuracy, sensitivity, explainability and do not improve upon the poor visualisations of the underlying medical imaging data. To address these limitations, I have developed a novel method of automatic MBD assessment and visualisation using computed tomography (CT) imaging data as the input. The method is fully automated and does not require any human interaction -- although users can interact with a viewer that visualises the results. This method has been tested on CT data from prostate cancer patients as prostate cancer is one of the most common sources of MBD. The method described in this thesis has a sensitivity of 0.871 when detecting sclerotic and lytic lesions within a single data set. This sensitivity is comparable to existing methods, however the scope in detecting these lesions was limited to the vertebrae in previous studies. My method significantly expands this scope to include the ribs, vertebrae, pelvis and proximal femurs. The work in this thesis also provides novel visualisations of the disease and does not suffer from explainability issues that plague modern machine learning algorithms. In addition, I developed a novel method of tracking the spread of MBD at multiple time points using longitudinal CT data. This method is capable of calculating the change in lesion volume size across multiple time points, providing a novel numerical assessment.The Armstrong Trus

A Survey on Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis

Deep learning algorithms, in particular convolutional networks, have rapidly become a methodology of choice for analyzing medical images. This paper reviews the major deep learning concepts pertinent to medical image analysis and summarizes over 300 contributions to the field, most of which appeared in the last year. We survey the use of deep learning for image classification, object detection, segmentation, registration, and other tasks and provide concise overviews of studies per application area. Open challenges and directions for future research are discussed.Comment: Revised survey includes expanded discussion section and reworked introductory section on common deep architectures. Added missed papers from before Feb 1st 201

Advanced Algorithms for 3D Medical Image Data Fusion in Specific Medical Problems

Fúze obrazu je dnes jednou z nejběžnějších avšak stále velmi diskutovanou oblastí v lékařském zobrazování a hraje důležitou roli ve všech oblastech lékařské péče jako je diagnóza, léčba a chirurgie. V této dizertační práci jsou představeny tři projekty, které jsou velmi úzce spojeny s oblastí fúze medicínských dat. První projekt pojednává o 3D CT subtrakční angiografii dolních končetin. V práci je využito kombinace kontrastních a nekontrastních dat pro získání kompletního cévního stromu. Druhý projekt se zabývá fúzí DTI a T1 váhovaných MRI dat mozku. Cílem tohoto projektu je zkombinovat stukturální a funkční informace, které umožňují zlepšit znalosti konektivity v mozkové tkáni. Třetí projekt se zabývá metastázemi v CT časových datech páteře. Tento projekt je zaměřen na studium vývoje metastáz uvnitř obratlů ve fúzované časové řadě snímků. Tato dizertační práce představuje novou metodologii pro klasifikaci těchto metastáz. Všechny projekty zmíněné v této dizertační práci byly řešeny v rámci pracovní skupiny zabývající se analýzou lékařských dat, kterou vedl pan Prof. Jiří Jan. Tato dizertační práce obsahuje registrační část prvního a klasifikační část třetího projektu. Druhý projekt je představen kompletně. Další část prvního a třetího projektu, obsahující specifické předzpracování dat, jsou obsaženy v disertační práci mého kolegy Ing. Romana Petera.Image fusion is one of today´s most common and still challenging tasks in medical imaging and it plays crucial role in all areas of medical care such as diagnosis, treatment and surgery. Three projects crucially dependent on image fusion are introduced in this thesis. The first project deals with the 3D CT subtraction angiography of lower limbs. It combines pre-contrast and contrast enhanced data to extract the blood vessel tree. The second project fuses the DTI and T1-weighted MRI brain data. The aim of this project is to combine the brain structural and functional information that purvey improved knowledge about intrinsic brain connectivity. The third project deals with the time series of CT spine data where the metastases occur. In this project the progression of metastases within the vertebrae is studied based on fusion of the successive elements of the image series. This thesis introduces new methodology of classifying metastatic tissue. All the projects mentioned in this thesis have been solved by the medical image analysis group led by Prof. Jiří Jan. This dissertation concerns primarily the registration part of the first project and the classification part of the third project. The second project is described completely. The other parts of the first and third project, including the specific preprocessing of the data, are introduced in detail in the dissertation thesis of my colleague Roman Peter, M.Sc.

Automatic segmentation of the spine by means of a probabilistic atlas with a special focus on ribs suppression

[EN] Purpose: The development of automatic and reliable algorithms for the detection and segmentation of the vertebrae are of great importance prior to any diagnostic task. However, an important problem found to accurately segment the vertebrae is the presence of the ribs in the thoracic region. To overcome this problem, a probabilistic atlas of the spine has been developed dealing with the proximity of other structures, with a special focus on ribs suppression. Methods: The data sets used consist of Computed Tomography images corresponding to 21 patients suffering from spinal metastases. Two methods have been combined to obtain the final result: firstly, an initial segmentation is performed using a fully automatic level-set method; secondly, to refine the initial segmentation, a 3D volume indicating the probability of each voxel of belonging to the spine has been developed. In this way, a probability map is generated and deformed to be adapted to each testing case. Results: To validate the improvement obtained after applying the atlas, the Dice coefficient (DSC), the Hausdorff distance (HD), and the mean surface-to-surface distance (MSD) were used. The results showed up an average of 10 mm of improvement accuracy in terms of HD, obtaining an overall final average of 15.51 2.74 mm. Also, a global value of 91.01 3.18% in terms of DSC and a MSD of 0.66 0.25 mm were obtained. The major improvement using the atlas was achieved in the thoracic region, as ribs were almost perfectly suppressed. Conclusion: The study demonstrated that the atlas is able to detect and appropriately eliminate the ribs while improving the segmentation accuracy.The authors thank the financial support of the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO) and FEDER funds under Grants TEC2012-33778 and BFU2015-64380-C2-2-R (D.M.) and DPI2013-4572-R (J.D., E.D.)Ruiz-España, S.; Domingo, J.; Díaz-Parra, A.; Dura, E.; D'ocon-Alcaniz, V.; Arana, E.; Moratal, D. (2017). 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Parametric modelling and segmentation of vertebral bodies in 3D CT and MR spine images. Physics in Medicine and Biology, 56(23), 7505-7522. doi:10.1088/0031-9155/56/23/011Korez, R., Ibragimov, B., Likar, B., Pernus, F., & Vrtovec, T. (2015). A Framework for Automated Spine and Vertebrae Interpolation-Based Detection and Model-Based Segmentation. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 34(8), 1649-1662. doi:10.1109/tmi.2015.2389334Castro-Mateos, I., Pozo, J. M., Pereanez, M., Lekadir, K., Lazary, A., & Frangi, A. F. (2015). Statistical Interspace Models (SIMs): Application to Robust 3D Spine Segmentation. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 34(8), 1663-1675. doi:10.1109/tmi.2015.2443912Pereanez, M., Lekadir, K., Castro-Mateos, I., Pozo, J. M., Lazary, A., & Frangi, A. F. (2015). Accurate Segmentation of Vertebral Bodies and Processes Using Statistical Shape Decomposition and Conditional Models. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 34(8), 1627-1639. doi:10.1109/tmi.2015.2396774Michael Kelm, B., Wels, M., Kevin Zhou, S., Seifert, S., Suehling, M., Zheng, Y., & Comaniciu, D. (2013). Spine detection in CT and MR using iterated marginal space learning. Medical Image Analysis, 17(8), 1283-1292. doi:10.1016/j.media.2012.09.007Yan Kang, Engelke, K., & Kalender, W. A. (2003). A new accurate and precise 3-D segmentation method for skeletal structures in volumetric CT data. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 22(5), 586-598. doi:10.1109/tmi.2003.812265Huang, J., Jian, F., Wu, H., & Li, H. (2013). An improved level set method for vertebra CT image segmentation. BioMedical Engineering OnLine, 12(1), 48. doi:10.1186/1475-925x-12-48Lim, P. H., Bagci, U., & Bai, L. (2013). Introducing Willmore Flow Into Level Set Segmentation of Spinal Vertebrae. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 60(1), 115-122. doi:10.1109/tbme.2012.2225833Forsberg, D., Lundström, C., Andersson, M., & Knutsson, H. (2013). Model-based registration for assessment of spinal deformities in idiopathic scoliosis. Physics in Medicine and Biology, 59(2), 311-326. doi:10.1088/0031-9155/59/2/311Yao, J., Burns, J. E., Forsberg, D., Seitel, A., Rasoulian, A., Abolmaesumi, P., … Li, S. (2016). A multi-center milestone study of clinical vertebral CT segmentation. Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics, 49, 16-28. doi:10.1016/j.compmedimag.2015.12.006Shi, C., Wang, J., & Cheng, Y. (2015). Sparse Representation-Based Deformation Model for Atlas-Based Segmentation of Liver CT Images. Image and Graphics, 410-419. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-21969-1_36Domingo, J., Dura, E., Ayala, G., & Ruiz-España, S. (2015). Means of 2D and 3D Shapes and Their Application in Anatomical Atlas Building. 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CT Scanning

Since its introduction in 1972, X-ray computed tomography (CT) has evolved into an essential diagnostic imaging tool for a continually increasing variety of clinical applications. The goal of this book was not simply to summarize currently available CT imaging techniques but also to provide clinical perspectives, advances in hybrid technologies, new applications other than medicine and an outlook on future developments. Major experts in this growing field contributed to this book, which is geared to radiologists, orthopedic surgeons, engineers, and clinical and basic researchers. We believe that CT scanning is an effective and essential tools in treatment planning, basic understanding of physiology, and and tackling the ever-increasing challenge of diagnosis in our society