DoctorEye: A clinically driven multifunctional platform, for accurate processing of tumors in medical images

Copyright @ Skounakis et al.This paper presents a novel, open access interactive platform for 3D medical image analysis, simulation and visualization, focusing in oncology images. The platform was developed through constant interaction and feedback from expert clinicians integrating a thorough analysis of their requirements while having an ultimate goal of assisting in accurately delineating tumors. It allows clinicians not only to work with a large number of 3D tomographic datasets but also to efficiently annotate multiple regions of interest in the same session. Manual and semi-automatic segmentation techniques combined with integrated correction tools assist in the quick and refined delineation of tumors while different users can add different components related to oncology such as tumor growth and simulation algorithms for improving therapy planning. The platform has been tested by different users and over large number of heterogeneous tomographic datasets to ensure stability, usability, extensibility and robustness with promising results. AVAILABILITY: THE PLATFORM, A MANUAL AND TUTORIAL VIDEOS ARE AVAILABLE AT: http://biomodeling.ics.forth.gr. It is free to use under the GNU General Public License

Active Contours and Image Segmentation: The Current State Of the Art

Image segmentation is a fundamental task in image analysis responsible for partitioning an image into multiple sub-regions based on a desired feature. Active contours have been widely used as attractive image segmentation methods because they always produce sub-regions with continuous boundaries, while the kernel-based edge detection methods, e.g. Sobel edge detectors, often produce discontinuous boundaries. The use of level set theory has provided more flexibility and convenience in the implementation of active contours. However, traditional edge-based active contour models have been applicable to only relatively simple images whose sub-regions are uniform without internal edges. Here in this paper we attempt to brief the taxonomy and current state of the art in Image segmentation and usage of Active Contours

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

Automatic MRI 2D Brain Segmentation using Graph SearchingTechnique

Accurate and efficient segmentation of the whole brain in magnetic resonance (MR) images is a key task in many neuroscience and medical studies either because the whole brain is the final anatomical structure of interest or because the automatic extraction facilitates further analysis. The problem of segmenting brain MRI images has been extensively addressed by many researchers. Despite the relevant achievements obtained, automated segmentation of brain MRI imagery is still a challenging problem whose solution has to cope with critical aspects such as anatomical variability and pathological deformation. In the present paper, we describe and experimentally evaluate a method for segmenting brain from MRI images basing on two-dimensional graph searching principles for border detection. The segmentation of the whole brain over the entire volume is accomplished slice by slice, automatically detecting frames including eyes. The method is fully automatic and easily reproducible by computing the internal main parameters directly from the image data. The segmentation procedure is conceived as a tool of general applicability, although design requirements are especially commensurate with the accuracy required in clinical tasks such as surgical planning and post-surgical assessment. Several experiments were performed to assess the performance of the algorithm on a varied set of MRI images obtaining good results in terms of accuracy and stabilit

Spatial fuzzy c-mean sobel algorithm with grey wolf optimizer for MRI brain image segmentation

Segmentation is the process of dividing the original image into multiple sub regions called segments in such a way that there is no intersection between any two regions. In medical images, the segmentation is hard to obtain due to the intensity similarity among various regions and the presence of noise in medical images. One of the most popular segmentation algorithms is Spatial Fuzzy C-means (SFCM). Although this algorithm has a good performance in medical images, it suffers from two issues. The first problem is lack of a proper strategy for point initialization step, which must be performed either randomly or manually by human. The second problem of SFCM is having inaccurate segmented edges. The goal of this research is to propose a robust medical image segmentation algorithm that overcomes these weaknesses of SFCM for segmenting magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain images with less human intervention. First, in order to find the optimum initial points, a histogram based algorithm in conjunction with Grey Wolf Optimizer (H-GWO) is proposed. The proposed H-GWO algorithm finds the approximate initial point values by the proposed histogram based method and then by taking advantage of GWO, which is a soft computing method, the optimum initial values are found. Second, in order to enhance SFCM segmentation process and achieve higher accurate segmented edges, an edge detection algorithm called Sobel was utilized. Therefore, the proposed hybrid SFCM-Sobel algorithm first finds the edges of the original image by Sobel edge detector algorithm and finally extends the edges of SFCM segmented images to the edges that are detected by Sobel. In order to have a robust segmentation algorithm with less human intervention, the H-GWO and SFCM-Sobel segmentation algorithms are integrated to have a semi-automatic robust segmentation algorithm. The results of the proposed H-GWO algorithms show that optimum initial points are achieved and the segmented images of the SFCM-Sobel algorithm have more accurate edges as compared to recent algorithms. Overall, quantitative analysis indicates that better segmentation accuracy is obtained. Therefore, this algorithm can be utilized to capture more accurate segmented in images in the era of medical imaging

Segmentation of biomedical images using active contour model with robust image feature and shape prior

In this article, a new level set model is proposed for the segmentation of biomedical images. The image energy of the proposed model is derived from a robust image gradient feature which gives the active contour a global representation of the geometric configuration, making it more robust in dealing with image noise, weak edges, and initial configurations. Statistical shape information is incorporated using nonparametric shape density distribution, which allows the shape model to handle relatively large shape variations. The segmentation of various shapes from both synthetic and real images depict the robustness and efficiency of the proposed method