4,694 research outputs found
Template-Cut: A Pattern-Based Segmentation Paradigm
We present a scale-invariant, template-based segmentation paradigm that sets
up a graph and performs a graph cut to separate an object from the background.
Typically graph-based schemes distribute the nodes of the graph uniformly and
equidistantly on the image, and use a regularizer to bias the cut towards a
particular shape. The strategy of uniform and equidistant nodes does not allow
the cut to prefer more complex structures, especially when areas of the object
are indistinguishable from the background. We propose a solution by introducing
the concept of a "template shape" of the target object in which the nodes are
sampled non-uniformly and non-equidistantly on the image. We evaluate it on
2D-images where the object's textures and backgrounds are similar, and large
areas of the object have the same gray level appearance as the background. We
also evaluate it in 3D on 60 brain tumor datasets for neurosurgical planning
purposes.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables, 6 equations, 51 reference
Framework for a low-cost intra-operative image-guided neuronavigator including brain shift compensation
In this paper we present a methodology to address the problem of brain tissue
deformation referred to as 'brain-shift'. This deformation occurs throughout a
neurosurgery intervention and strongly alters the accuracy of the
neuronavigation systems used to date in clinical routine which rely solely on
pre-operative patient imaging to locate the surgical target, such as a tumour
or a functional area. After a general description of the framework of our
intra-operative image-guided system, we describe a procedure to generate
patient specific finite element meshes of the brain and propose a biomechanical
model which can take into account tissue deformations and surgical procedures
that modify the brain structure, like tumour or tissue resection
Optimization-based interactive segmentation interface for multiregion problems.
Interactive segmentation is becoming of increasing interest to the medical imaging community in that it combines the positive aspects of both manual and automated segmentation. However, general-purpose tools have been lacking in terms of segmenting multiple regions simultaneously with a high degree of coupling between groups of labels. Hierarchical max-flow segmentation has taken advantage of this coupling for individual applications, but until recently, these algorithms were constrained to a particular hierarchy and could not be considered general-purpose. In a generalized form, the hierarchy for any given segmentation problem is specified in run-time, allowing different hierarchies to be quickly explored. We present an interactive segmentation interface, which uses generalized hierarchical max-flow for optimization-based multiregion segmentation guided by user-defined seeds. Applications in cardiac and neonatal brain segmentation are given as example applications of its generality
Cellular automata segmentation of brain tumors on post contrast MR images
In this paper, we re-examine the cellular automata(CA) al- gorithm to show that the result of its state evolution converges to that of the shortest path algorithm. We proposed a complete tumor segmenta- tion method on post contrast T1 MR images, which standardizes the VOI and seed selection, uses CA transition rules adapted to the problem and evolves a level set surface on CA states to impose spatial smoothness. Val- idation studies on 13 clinical and 5 synthetic brain tumors demonstrated the proposed algorithm outperforms graph cut and grow cut algorithms in all cases with a lower sensitivity to initialization and tumor type
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
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