title: 3D Winding Number: Theory and Application to Medical Imaging.
abstract: We develop a new formulation, mathematically elegant, to detect critical points of 3D scalar images. It is based on a topological number, which is the generalization to three dimensions of the 2D winding number. We illustrate our method by considering three different biomedical applications, namely, detection and counting of ovarian follicles and neuronal cells and estimation of cardiac motion from tagged MR images. Qualitative and quantitative evaluation emphasizes the reliability of the results.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Becciu
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fuster
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pottek
authors.forename: Bart
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: van den Heuvel
authors.forename: Bart
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Ter Haar Romeny
authors.forename: Hans
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: van Assen