Shape-aware label fusion for multi-atlas frameworks
Journal article, 2019

Despite of having no explicit shape model, multi-atlas approaches to image segmentation have proved to be a top-performer for several diverse datasets and imaging modalities. In this paper, we show how one can directly incorporate shape regularization into the multi-atlas framework. Unlike traditional multi-atlas methods, our proposed approach does not rely on label fusion on the voxel level. Instead, each registered atlas is viewed as an estimate of the position of a shape model. We evaluate and compare our method on two public benchmarks: (i) the VISCERAL Grand Challenge on multi-organ segmentation of whole-body CT images and (ii) the Hammers brain atlas of MR images for segmenting the hippocampus and the amygdala. For this wide spectrum of both easy and hard segmentation tasks, our experimental quantitative results are on par or better than state-of-the-art. More importantly, we obtain qualitatively better segmentation boundaries, for instance, preserving topology and fine structures.Despite of having no explicit shape model, multi-atlas approaches to image segmentation have proved to be a top-performer for several diverse datasets and imaging modalities. In this paper, we show how one can directly incorporate shape regularization into the multi-atlas framework. Unlike traditional multi-atlas methods, our proposed approach does not rely on label fusion on the voxel level. Instead, each registered atlas is viewed as an estimate of the position of a shape model. We evaluate and compare our method on two public benchmarks: (i) the VISCERAL Grand Challenge on multi-organ segmentation of whole-body CT images and (ii) the Hammers brain atlas of MR images for segmenting the hippocampus and the amygdala. For this wide spectrum of both easy and hard segmentation tasks, our experimental quantitative results are on par or better than state-of-the-art. More importantly, we obtain qualitatively better segmentation boundaries, for instance, preserving topology and fine structures.

Shape model

Multi-atlas label fusion

Medical image segmentation

Author

Jennifer Alvén

Chalmers, Electrical Engineering, Signal Processing and Biomedical Engineering

Fredrik Kahl

Chalmers, Electrical Engineering, Signal Processing and Biomedical Engineering

Olof Enqvist

Chalmers, Electrical Engineering, Signal Processing and Biomedical Engineering

Pattern Recognition Letters

0167-8655 (ISSN)

Vol. 124 109-117

Areas of Advance

Information and Communication Technology

Life Science Engineering (2010-2018)

Subject Categories

Computer Vision and Robotics (Autonomous Systems)

Medical Image Processing

DOI

10.1016/j.patrec.2018.07.008

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4/6/2022 5