A review of algorithms for medical image segmentation and their applications to the female pelvic cavity

This paper aims to make a review on the current segmentation algorithms used for medical images. Algorithms are classified according to their principal methodologies, namely the ones based on thresholds, the ones based on clustering techniques and the ones based on deformable models. The last type is focused on due to the intensive investigations into the deformable models that have been done in the last few decades. Typical algorithms of each type are discussed and the main ideas, application fields, advantages and disadvantages of each type are summarised. Experiments that apply these algorithms to segment the organs and tissues of the female pelvic cavity are presented to further illustrate their distinct characteristics. In the end, the main guidelines that should be considered for designing the segmentation algorithms of the pelvic cavity are proposed

Brain Tumor Detection and Segmentation in Multisequence MRI

Tato práce se zabývá detekcí a segmentací mozkového nádoru v multisekvenčních MR obrazech se zaměřením na gliomy vysokého a nízkého stupně malignity. Jsou zde pro tento účel navrženy tři metody. První metoda se zabývá detekcí prezence částí mozkového nádoru v axiálních a koronárních řezech. Jedná se o algoritmus založený na analýze symetrie při různých rozlišeních obrazu, který byl otestován na T1, T2, T1C a FLAIR obrazech. Druhá metoda se zabývá extrakcí oblasti celého mozkového nádoru, zahrnující oblast jádra tumoru a edému, ve FLAIR a T2 obrazech. Metoda je schopna extrahovat mozkový nádor z 2D i 3D obrazů. Je zde opět využita analýza symetrie, která je následována automatickým stanovením intenzitního prahu z nejvíce asymetrických částí. Třetí metoda je založena na predikci lokální struktury a je schopna segmentovat celou oblast nádoru, jeho jádro i jeho aktivní část. Metoda využívá faktu, že většina lékařských obrazů vykazuje vysokou podobnost intenzit sousedních pixelů a silnou korelaci mezi intenzitami v různých obrazových modalitách. Jedním ze způsobů, jak s touto korelací pracovat a používat ji, je využití lokálních obrazových polí. Podobná korelace existuje také mezi sousedními pixely v anotaci obrazu. Tento příznak byl využit v predikci lokální struktury při lokální anotaci polí. Jako klasifikační algoritmus je v této metodě použita konvoluční neuronová síť vzhledem k její známe schopnosti zacházet s korelací mezi příznaky. Všechny tři metody byly otestovány na veřejné databázi 254 multisekvenčních MR obrazech a byla dosáhnuta přesnost srovnatelná s nejmodernějšími metodami v mnohem kratším výpočetním čase (v řádu sekund při použitý CPU), což poskytuje možnost manuálních úprav při interaktivní segmetaci.This work deals with the brain tumor detection and segmentation in multisequence MR images with particular focus on high- and low-grade gliomas. Three methods are propose for this purpose. The first method deals with the presence detection of brain tumor structures in axial and coronal slices. This method is based on multi-resolution symmetry analysis and it was tested for T1, T2, T1C and FLAIR images. The second method deals with extraction of the whole brain tumor region, including tumor core and edema, in FLAIR and T2 images and is suitable to extract the whole brain tumor region from both 2D and 3D. It also uses the symmetry analysis approach which is followed by automatic determination of the intensity threshold from the most asymmetric parts. The third method is based on local structure prediction and it is able to segment the whole tumor region as well as tumor core and active tumor. This method takes the advantage of a fact that most medical images feature a high similarity in intensities of nearby pixels and a strong correlation of intensity profiles across different image modalities. One way of dealing with -- and even exploiting -- this correlation is the use of local image patches. In the same way, there is a high correlation between nearby labels in image annotation, a feature that has been used in the ``local structure prediction'' of local label patches. Convolutional neural network is chosen as a learning algorithm, as it is known to be suited for dealing with correlation between features. All three methods were evaluated on a public data set of 254 multisequence MR volumes being able to reach comparable results to state-of-the-art methods in much shorter computing time (order of seconds running on CPU) providing means, for example, to do online updates when aiming at an interactive segmentation.

Iterative Segmentation from Limited Training Data: Applications to Congenital Heart Disease

We propose a new iterative segmentation model which can be accurately learned from a small dataset. A common approach is to train a model to directly segment an image, requiring a large collection of manually annotated images to capture the anatomical variability in a cohort. In contrast, we develop a segmentation model that recursively evolves a segmentation in several steps, and implement it as a recurrent neural network. We learn model parameters by optimizing the interme- diate steps of the evolution in addition to the final segmentation. To this end, we train our segmentation propagation model by presenting incom- plete and/or inaccurate input segmentations paired with a recommended next step. Our work aims to alleviate challenges in segmenting heart structures from cardiac MRI for patients with congenital heart disease (CHD), which encompasses a range of morphological deformations and topological changes. We demonstrate the advantages of this approach on a dataset of 20 images from CHD patients, learning a model that accurately segments individual heart chambers and great vessels. Com- pared to direct segmentation, the iterative method yields more accurate segmentation for patients with the most severe CHD malformations.Comment: Presented at the Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis Workshop, MICCAI 201

Two and three dimensional segmentation of multimodal imagery

The role of segmentation in the realms of image understanding/analysis, computer vision, pattern recognition, remote sensing and medical imaging in recent years has been significantly augmented due to accelerated scientific advances made in the acquisition of image data. This low-level analysis protocol is critical to numerous applications, with the primary goal of expediting and improving the effectiveness of subsequent high-level operations by providing a condensed and pertinent representation of image information. In this research, we propose a novel unsupervised segmentation framework for facilitating meaningful segregation of 2-D/3-D image data across multiple modalities (color, remote-sensing and biomedical imaging) into non-overlapping partitions using several spatial-spectral attributes. Initially, our framework exploits the information obtained from detecting edges inherent in the data. To this effect, by using a vector gradient detection technique, pixels without edges are grouped and individually labeled to partition some initial portion of the input image content. Pixels that contain higher gradient densities are included by the dynamic generation of segments as the algorithm progresses to generate an initial region map. Subsequently, texture modeling is performed and the obtained gradient, texture and intensity information along with the aforementioned initial partition map are used to perform a multivariate refinement procedure, to fuse groups with similar characteristics yielding the final output segmentation. Experimental results obtained in comparison to published/state-of the-art segmentation techniques for color as well as multi/hyperspectral imagery, demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method. Furthermore, for the purpose of achieving improved computational efficiency we propose an extension of the aforestated methodology in a multi-resolution framework, demonstrated on color images. Finally, this research also encompasses a 3-D extension of the aforementioned algorithm demonstrated on medical (Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Computed Tomography) volumes

Computerized Analysis of Magnetic Resonance Images to Study Cerebral Anatomy in Developing Neonates

The study of cerebral anatomy in developing neonates is of great importance for the understanding of brain development during the early period of life. This dissertation therefore focuses on three challenges in the modelling of cerebral anatomy in neonates during brain development. The methods that have been developed all use Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) as source data. To facilitate study of vascular development in the neonatal period, a set of image analysis algorithms are developed to automatically extract and model cerebral vessel trees. The whole process consists of cerebral vessel tracking from automatically placed seed points, vessel tree generation, and vasculature registration and matching. These algorithms have been tested on clinical Time-of- Flight (TOF) MR angiographic datasets. To facilitate study of the neonatal cortex a complete cerebral cortex segmentation and reconstruction pipeline has been developed. Segmentation of the neonatal cortex is not effectively done by existing algorithms designed for the adult brain because the contrast between grey and white matter is reversed. This causes pixels containing tissue mixtures to be incorrectly labelled by conventional methods. The neonatal cortical segmentation method that has been developed is based on a novel expectation-maximization (EM) method with explicit correction for mislabelled partial volume voxels. Based on the resulting cortical segmentation, an implicit surface evolution technique is adopted for the reconstruction of the cortex in neonates. The performance of the method is investigated by performing a detailed landmark study. To facilitate study of cortical development, a cortical surface registration algorithm for aligning the cortical surface is developed. The method first inflates extracted cortical surfaces and then performs a non-rigid surface registration using free-form deformations (FFDs) to remove residual alignment. Validation experiments using data labelled by an expert observer demonstrate that the method can capture local changes and follow the growth of specific sulcus

Rapid Segmentation Techniques for Cardiac and Neuroimage Analysis

Recent technological advances in medical imaging have allowed for the quick acquisition of highly resolved data to aid in diagnosis and characterization of diseases or to guide interventions. In order to to be integrated into a clinical work flow, accurate and robust methods of analysis must be developed which manage this increase in data. Recent improvements in in- expensive commercially available graphics hardware and General-Purpose Programming on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU) have allowed for many large scale data analysis problems to be addressed in meaningful time and will continue to as parallel computing technology improves. In this thesis we propose methods to tackle two clinically relevant image segmentation problems: a user-guided segmentation of myocardial scar from Late-Enhancement Magnetic Resonance Images (LE-MRI) and a multi-atlas segmentation pipeline to automatically segment and partition brain tissue from multi-channel MRI. Both methods are based on recent advances in computer vision, in particular max-flow optimization that aims at solving the segmentation problem in continuous space. This allows for (approximately) globally optimal solvers to be employed in multi-region segmentation problems, without the particular drawbacks of their discrete counterparts, graph cuts, which typically present with metrication artefacts. Max-flow solvers are generally able to produce robust results, but are known for being computationally expensive, especially with large datasets, such as volume images. Additionally, we propose two new deformable registration methods based on Gauss-Newton optimization and smooth the resulting deformation fields via total-variation regularization to guarantee the problem is mathematically well-posed. We compare the performance of these two methods against four highly ranked and well-known deformable registration methods on four publicly available databases and are able to demonstrate a highly accurate performance with low run times. The best performing variant is subsequently used in a multi-atlas segmentation pipeline for the segmentation of brain tissue and facilitates fast run times for this computationally expensive approach. All proposed methods are implemented using GPGPU for a substantial increase in computational performance and so facilitate deployment into clinical work flows. We evaluate all proposed algorithms in terms of run times, accuracy, repeatability and errors arising from user interactions and we demonstrate that these methods are able to outperform established methods. The presented approaches demonstrate high performance in comparison with established methods in terms of accuracy and repeatability while largely reducing run times due to the employment of GPU hardware