title: Fully automated, level set-based segmentation for knee MRIs using an adaptive force function and template: data from the osteoarthritis initiative.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  This study focuses on osteoarthritis (OA), which affects millions of adults and occurs in knee cartilage. Diagnosis of OA requires accurate segmentation of cartilage structures. Existing approaches to cartilage segmentation of knee imaging suffer from either lack of fully automatic algorithm, sub-par segmentation accuracy, or failure to consider all three cartilage tissues.
  
  
  METHODS
  We propose a novel segmentation algorithm for knee cartilages with level set-based segmentation method and novel template data. We used 20 normal subjects from osteoarthritis initiative database to construct new template data. We adopt spatial fuzzy C-mean clustering for automatic initialization of contours. Force function of our algorithm is modified to improve segmentation performance.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The proposed algorithm resulted in dice similarity coefficients (DSCs) of 87.1, 84.8 and 81.7 % for the femoral, patellar, and tibial cartilage, respectively from 10 subjects. The DSC results showed improvements of 8.8, 4.3 and 3.5 % for the femoral, patellar, and tibial cartilage respectively compared to existing approaches. Our algorithm could be applied to all three cartilage structures unlike existing approaches that considered only two cartilage tissues.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study proposes a novel fully automated segmentation algorithm adapted for three types of knee cartilage tissues. We leverage state-of-the-art level set approach with newly constructed knee template. The experimental results show that the proposed method improves the performance by an average of 5 % over existing methods.
authors: School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, South Korea.
authors: Chunsoo
authors: C
authors: Ahn
authors: School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, South Korea.
authors: Toan Duc
authors: TD
authors: Bui
authors: School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, South Korea.
authors: Yong-Woo
authors: YW
authors: Lee
authors: School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, South Korea. jtshin@skku.edu.
authors: Jitae
authors: J
authors: Shin
authors: School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, South Korea.
authors: Hyunjin
authors: H
authors: Park
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000465:Algorithms; D001331:Automation; D002358:Cartilage, Articular / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D017143:Fuzzy Logic; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D007719:Knee Joint / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008875:Middle Aged; D010003:Osteoarthritis / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D059629:Signal-To-Noise Ratio
keywords: Cartilage; Knee segmentation; Magnetic resonance imaging; Medical image processing