title: Slice-Based Prostate Segmentation in 3D US Images Using Continuity Constraint.
abstract: In the diagnosis and therapy of prostate cancer, it is critical to measure the volume of the prostate and locate its boundary. Three-dimensional transrectal ultrasound (3D TRUS) imaging has been demonstrated to be a useful technique to perform such a task. Due to image speckle as well as low contrast in ultrasound images, segmentation of the prostate in 3D US images is challenging. In this paper, we report on the development of an improved slice-based 3D prostate segmentation method. First, we imposed a continuity constraint for the end points of the prostate boundaries in a cross-sectional plane so that a smooth prostate boundary in 2D is obtained. Then, in each 2D slice, we inserted the end points into the vertex list of the initial contour to obtain a new contour, which forces the evolving contour to be driven to the boundary of the prostate. Evaluation demonstrated that our method could segment the prostate in 3D TRUS images more quickly and accurately.
authors.affiliation: Imaging Research Laboratories, Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5K8; Institute for Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China 430074.
authors.forename: Mingyue
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.forename: Igor
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Gyacskov
authors.forename: Xiaping
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Drangova
authors.forename: Aaron
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fenster
authors.forename: Donal
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Downey