Image segmentation using joint spatial-intensity-shape features: application to CT lung nodule segmentation

Xujiong Ye; Musib Siddique; Abdel Douiri; Gareth Beddoe; Greg Slabaugh

doi:10.1117/12.811151

27 March 2009 Image segmentation using joint spatial-intensity-shape features: application to CT lung nodule segmentation

Xujiong Ye, Musib Siddique, Abdel Douiri, Gareth Beddoe, Greg Slabaugh

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7259, Medical Imaging 2009: Image Processing; 72594V (2009) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.811151
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2009, Lake Buena Vista (Orlando Area), Florida, United States

Abstract

Automatic segmentation of medical images is a challenging problem due to the complexity and variability of human anatomy, poor contrast of the object being segmented, and noise resulting from the image acquisition process. This paper presents a novel feature-guided method for the segmentation of 3D medical lesions. The proposed algorithm combines 1) a volumetric shape feature (shape index) based on high-order partial derivatives; 2) mean shift clustering in a joint spatial-intensity-shape (JSIS) feature space; and 3) a modified expectation-maximization (MEM) algorithm on the mean shift mode map to merge the neighboring regions (modes). In such a scenario, the volumetric shape feature is integrated into the process of the segmentation algorithm. The joint spatial-intensity-shape features provide rich information for the segmentation of the anatomic structures or lesions (tumors). The proposed method has been evaluated on a clinical dataset of thoracic CT scans that contains 68 nodules. A volume overlap ratio between each segmented nodule and the ground truth annotation is calculated. Using the proposed method, the mean overlap ratio over all the nodules is 0.80. On visual inspection and using a quantitative evaluation, the experimental results demonstrate the potential of the proposed method. It can properly segment a variety of nodules including juxta-vascular and juxta-pleural nodules, which are challenging for conventional methods due to the high similarity of intensities between the nodules and their adjacent tissues. This approach could also be applied to lesion segmentation in other anatomies, such as polyps in the colon.

Citation Download Citation

Xujiong Ye, Musib Siddique, Abdel Douiri, Gareth Beddoe, and Greg Slabaugh "Image segmentation using joint spatial-intensity-shape features: application to CT lung nodule segmentation", Proc. SPIE 7259, Medical Imaging 2009: Image Processing, 72594V (27 March 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.811151

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