title: Intervertebral disc segmentation in MR images using anisotropic oriented flux.
abstract: This study proposes an unsupervised intervertebral disc segmentation system based on middle sagittal spine MR scans. The proposed system employs the novel anisotropic oriented flux detection scheme which helps distinguish the discs from the neighboring structures with similar intensity, recognize ambiguous disc boundaries, and handle the shape and intensity variation of the discs. Based on minimal user interaction, the proposed system begins with vertebral body tracking to infer the information regarding the positions and orientations of the target intervertebral discs. The information is employed in a set of image descriptors, which jointly constitute an energy functional describing the desired disc segmentation result. The energy functional is minimized by a level set based active contour model to perform disc segmentation. The proposed segmentation system is evaluated using a database consisting of 455 intervertebral discs extracted from 69 middle sagittal slices. It is demonstrated that the proposed method is capable of delivering accurate results for intervertebral disc segmentation.
authors.affiliation: GE Healthcare Canada, 268 Grosvenor Street, London, Ontario N6A 4V2, Canada. max.w.k.law@gmail.com
authors.forename: Max W K
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Law
authors.forename: Kengyeow
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tay
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Leung
authors.forename: Gregory
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: J Garvin
authors.forename: Shuo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D016880:Anisotropy; D006801:Humans; D007403:Intervertebral Disc / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*