title: Anatomical medial surfaces with efficient resolution of branches singularities.
abstract: Medial surfaces are powerful tools for shape description, but their use has been limited due to the sensibility of existing methods to branching artifacts. Medial branching artifacts are associated to perturbations of the object boundary rather than to geometric features. Such instability is a main obstacle for a confident application in shape recognition and description. Medial branches correspond to singularities of the medial surface and, thus, they are problematic for existing morphological and energy-based algorithms. In this paper, we use algebraic geometry concepts in an energy-based approach to compute a medial surface presenting a stable branching topology. We also present an efficient GPU-CPU implementation using standard image processing tools. We show the method computational efficiency and quality on a custom made synthetic database. Finally, we present some results on a medical imaging application for localization of abdominal pathologies.
authors: Computer Vision Center, Computer Science Department, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address: debora@cvc.uab.es.
authors: Debora
authors: D
authors: Gil
authors: Alma IT Systems, C/ Vilana 4B, 4-1, Barcelona 08022, Spain.
authors: Sergio
authors: S
authors: Vera
authors: Computer Vision Center, Computer Science Department, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address: agnesba@cvc.uab.es.
authors: Agnés
authors: A
authors: Borràs
authors: Computer Vision Center, Computer Science Department, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain.
authors: Albert
authors: A
authors: Andaluz
authors: Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain; ICREA, Barcelona, Spain.
authors: Miguel A
authors: MA
authors: González Ballester
mesh_terms: D000005:Abdomen / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology*; D000465:Algorithms; D016477:Artifacts; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods
keywords: Medial branching stability; Medial representations; Shape recognition; Singular points