107,951 research outputs found
Multi-Atlas Segmentation using Partially Annotated Data: Methods and Annotation Strategies
Multi-atlas segmentation is a widely used tool in medical image analysis,
providing robust and accurate results by learning from annotated atlas
datasets. However, the availability of fully annotated atlas images for
training is limited due to the time required for the labelling task.
Segmentation methods requiring only a proportion of each atlas image to be
labelled could therefore reduce the workload on expert raters tasked with
annotating atlas images. To address this issue, we first re-examine the
labelling problem common in many existing approaches and formulate its solution
in terms of a Markov Random Field energy minimisation problem on a graph
connecting atlases and the target image. This provides a unifying framework for
multi-atlas segmentation. We then show how modifications in the graph
configuration of the proposed framework enable the use of partially annotated
atlas images and investigate different partial annotation strategies. The
proposed method was evaluated on two Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) datasets
for hippocampal and cardiac segmentation. Experiments were performed aimed at
(1) recreating existing segmentation techniques with the proposed framework and
(2) demonstrating the potential of employing sparsely annotated atlas data for
multi-atlas segmentation
Content-based Propagation of User Markings for Interactive Segmentation of Patterned Images
Efficient and easy segmentation of images and volumes is of great practical
importance. Segmentation problems that motivate our approach originate from
microscopy imaging commonly used in materials science, medicine, and biology.
We formulate image segmentation as a probabilistic pixel classification
problem, and we apply segmentation as a step towards characterising image
content. Our method allows the user to define structures of interest by
interactively marking a subset of pixels. Thanks to the real-time feedback, the
user can place new markings strategically, depending on the current outcome.
The final pixel classification may be obtained from a very modest user input.
An important ingredient of our method is a graph that encodes image content.
This graph is built in an unsupervised manner during initialisation and is
based on clustering of image features. Since we combine a limited amount of
user-labelled data with the clustering information obtained from the unlabelled
parts of the image, our method fits in the general framework of semi-supervised
learning. We demonstrate how this can be a very efficient approach to
segmentation through pixel classification.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, PDFLaTe
- …