Segmentation and length measurement of the abdominal blood vessels in 3-D MRI images.
In diagnosing diseases and planning surgeries the structure and length of blood vessels is of great importance. In this research we develop a novel method for the segmentation of 2-D and 3-D images with an application to blood vessel length measurements in 3-D abdominal MRI images. Our approach is robust to noise and does not require contrast-enhanced images for segmentation. We use an effective algorithm for skeletonization, graph construction and shortest path estimation to measure the length of blood vessels of interest.
Babin
Danilo
D
Department of Telecommunications and Information Processing-TELIN-IPI-IBBT, Faculty of Sciences, Ghent University, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium. dbabin@telin.ugent.be
Vansteenkiste
Ewout
E
Pizurica
Aleksandra
A
Philips
Wilfried
W
D000005:Abdomen / Q000098:blood supply*; D000465:Algorithms; D001012:Aorta, Abdominal / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*