Hybrid segmentation of anatomical structure

US8023703B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• The United States of America as Represented by The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health Office of Technology Transfer · US

Inventors

• Marek Franaszek · Gaithersburg, US
• Ronald M. Summers · Potomac, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Jul 6, 2006
• Grant date: Sep 20, 2011
• Expiry date: Jan 25, 2029

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06V2201/032
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

An image of an anatomical structure can be analyzed to determine an enclosing three-dimensional boundary when the anatomical structure is filled with two substances, such as air and a fluid. Various techniques can be used to determine the enclosing boundary including: analyzing the virtual structure to segment the structure into air and fluid pockets, determining if there are multiple fluid pockets whose surface touches a single air-fluid boundary, determining a separate threshold for respective fluid pockets, resegmenting the virtual anatomical structure using the separate threshold for different fluid pockets, forming a hierarchical pocket tree which represents the relationship between the fluid and air pockets, pruning the pocket tree based on various criteria which corresponds to deleting those pruned portions from the virtual anatomical structure, and resegmenting the remaining virtual anatomical structure using one or more of fuzzy connectedness, two-dimensional gap filling, and level set segmentation.