Journal Article

Cube-Cut: Vertebral Body Segmentation in MRI-Data through Cubic-Shaped Divergences

Schwarzenberg, Robert, Nimsky, Christopher, Freisleben, Bernd, Egger, Jan

2014

Overview

In this article, we present a graph-based method using a cubic template for volumetric segmentation of vertebrae in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) acquisitions. The user can define the degree of deviation from a regular cube via a smoothness value Δ. The Cube-Cut algorithm generates a directed graph with two terminal nodes (s-t-network), where the nodes of the graph correspond to a cubic-shaped subset of the image's voxels. The weightings of the graph's terminal edges, which connect every node with a virtual source s or a virtual sink t, represent the affinity of a voxel to the vertebra (source) and to the background (sink). Furthermore, a set of infinite weighted and non-terminal edges implements the smoothness term. After graph construction, a minimal s-t-cut is calculated within polynomial computation time, which splits the nodes into two disjoint units. Subsequently, the segmentation result is determined out of the source-set. A quantitative evaluation of a C++ implementation of the algorithm resulted in an average Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) of 81.33% and a running time of less than a minute.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Algorithms / Anatomy, Cross-Sectional - methods / Biology and Life Sciences / Boundaries / Care and treatment / Computer and Information Sciences / Computer science / Diagnosis / Engineering and Technology / Graph theory / Humans / Image acquisition / Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted - methods / Image processing / Image segmentation / Imaging, Three-Dimensional - methods / International conferences / Magnetic resonance / Magnetic resonance imaging / Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods / Mathematical analysis / Mathematics / Medical imaging / Medicine and Health Sciences / Morphology / Neurosurgery / NMR / Nodes / Nuclear magnetic resonance / Organ Size / Pattern recognition / Physical Sciences / Prostate / Quantitative analysis / Registration / Run time (computers) / Segmentation / Set theory / Smoothness / Spinal diseases / Spine / Spine - anatomy & histology / Vertebra / Vertebrae / Volumetric analysis