title: Lung tumor segmentation in PET images using graph cuts.
abstract: The aim of segmentation of tumor regions in positron emission tomography (PET) is to provide more accurate measurements of tumor size and extension into adjacent structures, than is possible with visual assessment alone and hence improve patient management decisions. We propose a segmentation energy function for the graph cuts technique to improve lung tumor segmentation with PET. Our segmentation energy is based on an analysis of the tumor voxels in PET images combined with a standardized uptake value (SUV) cost function and a monotonic downhill SUV feature. The monotonic downhill feature avoids segmentation leakage into surrounding tissues with similar or higher PET tracer uptake than the tumor and the SUV cost function improves the boundary definition and also addresses situations where the lung tumor is heterogeneous. We evaluated the method in 42 clinical PET volumes from patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Our method improves segmentation and performs better than region growing approaches, the watershed technique, fuzzy-c-means, region-based active contour and tumor customized downhill.
authors.affiliation: Biomedical and Multimedia Information Technology (BMIT) Research Group, School of Information Technologies, The University of Sydney, Australia. cherry@it.usyd.edu.au
authors.forename: Cherry
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ballangan
authors.forename: Xiuying
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fulham
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Eberl
authors.forename: David Dagan
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Feng
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D002289:Carcinoma, Non-Small-Cell Lung / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology*; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18; D017143:Fuzzy Logic; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology*; D015233:Models, Statistical; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography / Q000379:methods*; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
chemical_list: D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18