An automatic subregion delineation method for T2 measurement of articular cartilage in the knee / 南方医科大学学报

ABSTRACT

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To propose a new method for automatic segmentation of manually determined knee articular cartilage into 9 subregions for T2 measurement.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>The middle line and normal line were automatically obtained based on the outline of articular cartilage manually drawn by experienced radiologists. The region of articular cartilage was then equidistantly divided into 3 layers along the direction of the normal line, and each layer was further equidistantly divided into 3 segments along the direction of the middle line. Finally the mean T2 value of each subregion was calculated. Bland-Altman analysis was used to evaluate the agreement between the proposed and manual subregion segmentation methods.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The 95% limits of agreement of manual and automatic methods ranged from -3.04 to 3.20 ms, demonstrating a narrow 95% limits of agreement (less than half of the minimum average). The coefficient of variation between the manual and proposed subregion methods was 4.04%.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The proposed subregion segmentation method shows a good agreement with the manual segmentation method and minimizes potential subjectivity of the manual method.</p>