title: Interactive morphological watershed analysis for 3D medical images.
abstract: Combining automatic processing with interactive techniques is proving to be an effective strategy for segmenting complex three-dimensional (3D) medical images. We describe a general 3D image segmentation strategy that draws upon morphological watershed analysis and operator-defined topological cues. Watershed analysis segments a gray scale image into different regions by interpreting the image as a topographic surface. Using readily available interactive techniques, a human operator can easily define cues that specify spatial relationships between regions of interest. Cues defined in such a manner greatly assist subsequent watershed analysis. Results using 3D cardiac images show that this method leads to rapid robust image segmentation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park 16802.
authors.forename: W E
authors.initials: WE
authors.lastname: Higgins
authors.forename: E J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Ojard
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001330:Electronic Data Processing; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D015903:Moire Topography / Q000379:methods*