Abstract

Medical volume images contain ambiguous and low-contrast boundaries around which existing fully- or semi-automatic segmentation algorithms often cause errors. In this paper, we propose a novel system for intuitively and efficiently refining medical volume segmentation by modifying multiple curved contours. Starting with seg-mentation data obtained using any existing algorithm, the user places a three-dimensional curved cross-section and contours of the foreground region by drawing a cut stroke, and then modifies the contours referring to the cross-section. The modified contours are used as constraints for deforming a boundary surface that envelops the foreground region, and the region is updated by that deformed boundary. Our surface deformation algorithm seamlessly integrates detail-preserving and curvature-diffusing methods to keep important detail boundary fea-tures intact while obtaining smooth surfaces around unimportant boundary regions. Our system supports topo-logical manipulations as well as contour shape modifications. We illustrate the feasibility of our system by pro-viding examples of its application to the segmentation of bones, muscles, kidneys with blood vessels, and bowels.

Publications

Takashi Ijiri and Hideo Yokota: Contour-based Interface for Refining Volume Segmentation Computer Graphics Forum, 29(2010), 7, 2153-2160. (Pacific Graphics2010).

井尻敬, 横田秀夫, 輪郭編集による三次元抽出領域の修正インタフェース, 情報処理学会，第142回グラフィクスとCAD研究発表会.

Materials

paper(preprint)
paper(preprint)(in Japanese)
video(.wmv)
slides(.zip)