title: A supervoxel-based segmentation method for prostate MR images.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Segmentation of the prostate on MR images has many applications in prostate cancer management. In this work, we propose a supervoxel-based segmentation method for prostate MR images.
  
  
  METHODS
  A supervoxel is a set of pixels that have similar intensities, locations, and textures in a 3D image volume. The prostate segmentation problem is considered as assigning a binary label to each supervoxel, which is either the prostate or background. A supervoxel-based energy function with data and smoothness terms is used to model the label. The data term estimates the likelihood of a supervoxel belonging to the prostate by using a supervoxel-based shape feature. The geometric relationship between two neighboring supervoxels is used to build the smoothness term. The 3D graph cut is used to minimize the energy function to get the labels of the supervoxels, which yields the prostate segmentation. A 3D active contour model is then used to get a smooth surface by using the output of the graph cut as an initialization. The performance of the proposed algorithm was evaluated on 30 in-house MR image data and PROMISE12 dataset.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The mean Dice similarity coefficients are 87.2 ± 2.3% and 88.2 ± 2.8% for our 30 in-house MR volumes and the PROMISE12 dataset, respectively. The proposed segmentation method yields a satisfactory result for prostate MR images.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The proposed supervoxel-based method can accurately segment prostate MR images and can have a variety of application in prostate cancer diagnosis and therapy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, School of Medicine, Emory University, 1841 Clifton Road NE, Atlanta, GA, 30329, USA.
authors.forename: Zhiqiang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Tian
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, School of Medicine, Emory University, 1841 Clifton Road NE, Atlanta, GA, 30329, USA.|Center for Medical Imaging and Image-guided Therapy, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, 651 Dongfeng East Road, Guangzhou, 510060, P. R., China.
authors.forename: Lizhi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Center for Medical Imaging and Image-guided Therapy, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, 651 Dongfeng East Road, Guangzhou, 510060, P. R., China.
authors.forename: Zhenfeng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Xi'an Jiaotong University, No.28 Xianning West Road, Xi'an, 710049, P. R., China.
authors.forename: Jianru
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, School of Medicine, Emory University, 1841 Clifton Road NE, Atlanta, GA, 30329, USA.|Department of Biomedical Engineering, Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology, 1841 Clifton Road NE, Atlanta, GA, 30329, USA.
authors.forename: Baowei
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Fei
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D011467:Prostate / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging
keywords: magnetic resonance image; prostate; segmentation; supervoxel