A Knowledge-Based Modality-Independent Technique for Concurrent Thigh Muscle Segmentation: Applicable to CT and MR Images.

The mass of the lower extremity muscles is a clinically significant metric. Manual segmentation of these muscles is a time-consuming task. Most of the segmentation methods for the thigh muscles are based on statistical models and atlases which need manually segmented datasets. The goal of this work is an automatic segmentation of the thigh muscles with only one initial segmented slice. A new automatic method is proposed for concurrent individual thigh muscles segmentation using a hybrid level set method and anatomical information of the muscles. In the proposed method, the muscle regions are extracted by the Fast and Robust Fuzzy C-Means Clustering (FRFCM) method, and then a contour is determined for each muscle which changes according to the muscle shape variation through its length. The anatomical information is used to control the contours variations and to refine the final boundaries. The method was validated by 22 CT datasets. The average dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of the method for individual muscle segmentation with one and two initial slices were 89.29 ± 2.59 (%) and 91.77 ± 1.87 (%), respectively. Also, the average symmetric surface distances (ASSDs) were 0.93 ± 0.29 mm and 0.64 ± 0.18 mm. Furthermore, applying to ten MRI datasets, the average DSC and ASSD for muscles were 90.9 ± 2.61 (%) and 0.71 ± 0.33 mm, respectively. The quantitative and intuitive results of the proposed method show the effectiveness of this method in segmentation of large and small muscles in CT and MR images. The consumed computation time is lower than the previous works, and this method does not need any training datasets.

A novel image-based retrieval system for characterization of maxillofacial lesions in cone beam CT images.

PURPOSE: The objective of medical content-based image retrieval (CBIR) is to assist clinicians in decision making by retrieving the most similar cases to a given query image from a large database. Herein, a new method for content-based image retrieval of cone beam CT (CBCT) scans is presented. METHODS: The introduced framework consists of two main phases: training database construction and querying. The goal of the training phase is database construction, which consists of three main steps. First, automatic segmentation of lesions using 3D symmetry analysis is performed. Embedding the prior shape knowledge of the 3D symmetry characteristics of the healthy human head structure increases the accuracy of automatic segmentation. Then, spatial pyramid matching is used for feature extraction, and the relative importance of each feature is learned using classifiers. RESULTS: The method was applied to a dataset of 1145 volumetric CBCT images with four classes of maxillofacial lesions. A symmetry-based analysis model for automatic lesion segmentation was evaluated using similarity measures. Mean Dice coefficients of 0.89, 0.85, 0.92, and 0.87 were achieved for maxillary sinus perforation, radiolucent lesion, unerupted tooth, and root fracture classes, respectively. Moreover, the execution time of automatic segmentation was reduced to 3 min per case. The performance of the proposed search engine was evaluated using mean average precision and normalized discounted cumulative gain. A mean average retrieval accuracy and normalized discounted cumulative gain of 0.90 and 0.92, respectively, were achieved. CONCLUSION: Quantitative results show that the proposed approach is more effective than previous methods in the literature, and it can facilitate the introduction of CBIR in clinical CBCT applications.

Automated classification of maxillofacial cysts in cone beam CT images using contourlet transformation and Spherical Harmonics.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Accurate detection of maxillofacial cysts is an essential step for diagnosis, monitoring and planning therapeutic intervention. Cysts can be of various sizes and shapes and existing detection methods lead to poor results. Customizing automatic detection systems to gain sufficient accuracy in clinical practice is highly challenging. For this purpose, integrating the engineering knowledge in efficient feature extraction is essential. METHODS: This paper presents a novel framework for maxillofacial cysts detection. A hybrid methodology based on surface and texture information is introduced. The proposed approach consists of three main steps as follows: At first, each cystic lesion is segmented with high accuracy. Then, in the second and third steps, feature extraction and classification are performed. Contourlet and SPHARM coefficients are utilized as texture and shape features which are fed into the classifier. Two different classifiers are used in this study, i.e. support vector machine and sparse discriminant analysis. Generally SPHARM coefficients are estimated by the iterative residual fitting (IRF) algorithm which is based on stepwise regression method. In order to improve the accuracy of IRF estimation, a method based on extra orthogonalization is employed to reduce linear dependency. We have utilized a ground-truth dataset consisting of cone beam CT images of 96 patients, belonging to three maxillofacial cyst categories: radicular cyst, dentigerous cyst and keratocystic odontogenic tumor. RESULTS: Using orthogonalized SPHARM, residual sum of squares is decreased which leads to a more accurate estimation. Analysis of the results based on statistical measures such as specificity, sensitivity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value is reported. The classification rate of 96.48% is achieved using sparse discriminant analysis and orthogonalized SPHARM features. Classification accuracy at least improved by 8.94% with respect to conventional features. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated that our proposed methodology can improve the computer assisted diagnosis (CAD) performance by incorporating more discriminative features. Using orthogonalized SPHARM is promising in computerized cyst detection and may have a significant impact in future CAD systems.

Automatic segmentation of mandibular canal in cone beam CT images using conditional statistical shape model and fast marching.

PURPOSE: Accurate segmentation of the mandibular canal in cone beam CT data is a prerequisite for implant surgical planning. In this article, a new segmentation method based on the combination of anatomical and statistical information is presented to segment mandibular canal in CBCT scans. METHODS: Generally, embedding shape information in segmentation models is challenging. The proposed approach consists of three main steps as follows: At first, a method based on low-rank decomposition is proposed for preprocessing. Then, a conditional statistical shape model is trained, and mandibular bone is segmented with high accuracy. In the final stage, fast marching with a new speed function is utilized to find the optimal path between mandibular and mental foramen. Fast marching tries to find the darkest tunnel close to the initial segmentation of the canal, which was obtained with conditional SSM model. In this regard, localization of mandibular canal is performed more accurately. RESULTS: The method is applied to the identification of mandibular canal in 120 sets of CBCT images. Conditional statistical model is evaluated by calculating the compactness capacity, specificity and generalization ability measures. The capability of the proposed model is evaluated in the segmentation of mandibular bone and canal. The framework is effective in noisy scans and is able to detect canal in cases with mild bone resorption. CONCLUSION: Quantitative analysis of the results shows that the method performed better than two other recent methods in the literature. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework is effective and can be used in computer-guided dental implant surgery.

Automatic segmentation of maxillofacial cysts in cone beam CT images.

Accurate segmentation of cysts and tumors is an essential step for diagnosis, monitoring and planning therapeutic intervention. This task is usually done manually, however manual identification and segmentation is tedious. In this paper, an automatic method based on asymmetry analysis is proposed which is general enough to segment various types of jaw cysts. The key observation underlying this approach is that normal head and face structure is roughly symmetric with respect to midsagittal plane: the left part and the right part can be divided equally by an axis of symmetry. Cysts and tumors typically disturb this symmetry. The proposed approach consists of three main steps as follows: At first, diffusion filtering is used for preprocessing and symmetric axis is detected. Then, each image is divided into two parts. In the second stage, free form deformation (FFD) is used to correct slight displacement of corresponding pixels of the left part and a reflected copy of the right part. In the final stage, intensity differences are analyzed and a number of constraints are enforced to remove false positive regions. The proposed method has been validated on 97 Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) sets containing various jaw cysts which were collected from various image acquisition centers. Validation is performed using three similarity indicators (Jaccard index, Dice's coefficient and Hausdorff distance). The mean Dice's coefficient of 0.83, 0.87 and 0.80 is achieved for Radicular, Dentigerous and KCOT classes, respectively. For most of the experiments done, we achieved high true positive (TP). This means that a large number of cyst pixels are correctly classified. Quantitative results of automatic segmentation show that the proposed method is more effective than one of the recent methods in the literature.

Classification of normal and diseased liver shapes based on Spherical Harmonics coefficients.

Liver-shape analysis and quantification is still an open research subject. Quantitative assessment of the liver is of clinical importance in various procedures such as diagnosis, treatment planning, and monitoring. Liver-shape classification is of clinical importance for corresponding intra-subject and inter-subject studies. In this research, we propose a novel technique for the liver-shape classification based on Spherical Harmonics (SH) coefficients. The proposed liver-shape classification algorithm consists of the following steps: (a) Preprocessing, including mesh generation and simplification, point-set matching, and surface to template alignment; (b) Liver-shape parameterization, including surface normalization, SH expansion followed by parameter space registration; (c) Feature selection and classification, including frequency based feature selection, feature space reduction by Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and classification. The above multi-step approach is novel in the sense that registration and feature selection for liver-shape classification is proposed and implemented and validated for the normal and diseases liver in the SH domain. Various groups of SH features after applying conventional PCA and/or ordered by p-value PCA are employed in two classifiers including Support Vector Machine (SVM) and k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) in the presence of 101 liver data sets. Results show that the proposed specific features combined with classifiers outperform existing liver-shape classification techniques that employ liver surface information in the spatial domain. In the available data sets, the proposed method can successful classify normal and diseased livers with a correct classification rate of above 90 %. The performed result in average is higher than conventional liver-shape classification method. Several standard metrics such as Leave-one-out cross-validation and Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis are employed in the experiments and confirm the effectiveness of the proposed liver-shape classification with respect to conventional techniques.

Statistical construction of a Japanese male liver phantom for internal radionuclide dosimetry.

A computational framework is presented, based on statistical shape modelling, for construction of race-specific organ models for internal radionuclide dosimetry and other nuclear-medicine applications. This approach was applied to the construction of a Japanese liver phantom, using the liver of the digital Zubal phantom as the template and 35 liver computed tomography (CT) scans of male Japanese individuals as a training set. The first step was the automated object-space registration (to align all the liver surfaces in one orientation), using a coherent-point-drift maximum-likelihood alignment algorithm, of each CT scan-derived manually contoured liver surface and the template Zubal liver phantom. Six landmark points, corresponding to the intersection of the contours of the maximum-area sagittal, transaxial and coronal liver sections were employed to perform the above task. To find correspondence points in livers (i.e. 2000 points for each liver), each liver surface was transformed into a mesh, was mapped for the parameter space of a sphere (parameterisation), yielding spherical harmonics (SPHARMs) shape descriptors. The resulting spherical transforms were then registered by minimising the root-mean-square distance among the SPHARMs coefficients. A mean shape (i.e. liver) and its dispersion (i.e. covariance matrix) were next calculated and analysed by principal components. Leave-one-out-tests using 5-35 principal components (or modes) demonstrated the fidelity of the foregoing statistical analysis. Finally, a voxelisation algorithm and a point-based registration is utilised to convert the SPHARM surfaces into its corresponding voxelised and adjusted the Zubal phantom data, respectively. The proposed technique used to create the race-specific statistical phantom maintains anatomic realism and provides the statistical parameters for application to radionuclide dosimetry.