title: Optimization-based interactive segmentation interface for multiregion problems.
abstract: Interactive segmentation is becoming of increasing interest to the medical imaging community in that it combines the positive aspects of both manual and automated segmentation. However, general-purpose tools have been lacking in terms of segmenting multiple regions simultaneously with a high degree of coupling between groups of labels. Hierarchical max-flow segmentation has taken advantage of this coupling for individual applications, but until recently, these algorithms were constrained to a particular hierarchy and could not be considered general-purpose. In a generalized form, the hierarchy for any given segmentation problem is specified in run-time, allowing different hierarchies to be quickly explored. We present an interactive segmentation interface, which uses generalized hierarchical max-flow for optimization-based multiregion segmentation guided by user-defined seeds. Applications in cardiac and neonatal brain segmentation are given as example applications of its generality.
authors.affiliation: Western University, Robarts Research Institute, 1151 Richmond Street N., London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada; Western University, Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program, 1151 Richmond Street N., London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada.
authors.forename: John S H
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Baxter
authors.affiliation: Western University, Robarts Research Institute, 1151 Richmond Street N., London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada; Imperial College London, Department of Computing, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rajchl
authors.affiliation: Western University, Robarts Research Institute, 1151 Richmond Street N., London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada; Western University, Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program, 1151 Richmond Street N., London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada.
authors.forename: Terry M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Peters
authors.affiliation: Western University , Robarts Research Institute, 1151 Richmond Street N., London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada.
authors.forename: Elvis C S
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Chen
keywords: ASETS library; convex optimization; hierarchical max-flow segmentation; interactive segmentation; optimization-based segmentation