Martin Urschler Institut fr Maschinelles Sehen u. Darstellen Techn. Universitt Graz
In Zusammenarbeit mit Prof. Rainer Rienmller Univ. Klinik f. Radiologie, LKH Graz
Agenda Introduction Medical Image Data & Problems Volumetry Parametric Model (2-axis-method, Greene) Segmentation-Based Models Implementation Overview LiveWire Approach Results Conclusion Introduction Goal: Measure volume of hearts left ventricle Parametric vs. Segmentation-Based Purpose: Heart-Disease Diagnose stroke volume -> important function parameter sliced heart left ventricle Medical Image Data DICOM fileformat 10 Images per location (1 Heartbeat, ECG-triggered) 1 heartbeat 10 images 8 Long-Axis image locations 8 slices Acquisition: Ultrafast CT Scanner Example Image Data Set NK Problems Partial Volume Effect Distinction between left ventricle and surrounding tissue gradient Weak gradient information
Volumetry (I) - Parametric Model Locate image with max. projected ventricle area Calculate volume of modi- fied rotational ellipsoid V = PI/6 * width * height^2 Measure ellipse parameters width height Volumetry (II) - Segmentation Basic Methods: Thresholding Edge Detecting Filters (Sobel, Canny) Region Growing Active Contours (Snakes) [Kass et al 88] LiveWire [Barret92][Udupa,Falcao92]
Volume by Simpson Rule: count segmented image pixels multiply with voxel size Implementation (II) - Thresholding weak performance due to partial volume, weak contrast, non-trivial separation of chambers Implementation (III) Snakes problems due to: partial volume, weak contrast non-intuitive parameterization, only possible after minimi- zation of contour outliers attracted to high gradients heavily depending on initial contour Implementation (IV) - LiveWire Seems to be very suitable for application! Graph-theoretic, highly interactive approach LiveWire Approach (I) Segmentation consists of: obj. recognition -> human better obj. delineation -> machine/algorithm better LiveWire combines human recognition and automatic delineation!
LiveWire (II) - Ingredients Image pixel -> node of graph a b c e d cost(p,q) = w1*fz + w2*fg + w3*fd p,q ... adjacent pixels (4- or 8-neighbours) w1,w2,w3 ... weights fz ... Laplacian Zero Crossing fg ... Image gradient magnitude fd ... Image gradient direction
cost(b,e) cost(a,e) cost(d,e) cost(c,e) 2 adjacent pixel -> directed arcs of graph arcs are weighted by cost function LiveWire (III) - Algorithm 2 steps: 1. Compute all shortest paths in image to a selected start-point 2. While moving mouse, current position is end point -> select shortest path connecting start and end point Find shortest paths -> Dijkstra Start point End point End point Shortest-Path map LiveWire(V) - More Features Path cooling for intermed. points Real Time segmentation possible (show demo!)
LiveWire Disadvantage: Segmenting 16 images is faster than manual segmentation but still time- consuming! Results (I) Evaluation of 31 data sets Volumes achieved by Parametric model Manually drawn contours (Prof. Rienmller) Thresholding Contours after Snake segmentation Contours after LiveWire segmentation
Results (II) LiveWire contours vs. parametric model Similar results for Snake- and manually drawn contours Results (III) Comparison btw. LiveWire & manual contours High correlation, fast & accurate reproduction of Prof. Rienmllers contours! Results (IV) Summary & Conclusion Comparison segmentation-based vs. parametric volume estimation Algorithms: Thresholding, Snakes LiveWire LiveWire shows excellent behaviour, it would be powerful for reducing segmentation time in the hands of a radiologist!