Abstract
Prostate contours delineation on Magnetic Resonance (MR) images is a challenging and important task in medical imaging with applications of guiding biopsy, surgery and therapy. While a fully automated method is highly desired for this application, it can be a very difficult task due to the structure and surrounding tissues of the prostate gland. Traditional active contours based delineation algorithms are typically quite successful for piecewise constant images. Nevertheless, when MR images have diffuse edges or multiple
similar objects (e.g., bladder close to prostate) within close proximity, such approaches have proven to be unsuccessful. In order to mitigate these problems, we proposed a new framework for bi-stage contours delineation algorithm based on Directional Active Contours (DAC) incorporating prior knowledge of the
prostate shape. We first explicitly addressed the prostate contour delineation problem based on fast globally DAC that incorporates both statistical and parametric shape prior model. In doing so, we were able to exploit the global aspects of contour delineation problem by incorporating a user feedback in contours delineation process where it is shown that only a small amount of user input can sometimes resolve ambiguous scenarios raised by DAC. In addition, once the prostate contours have been delineated, a cost functional is designed to incorporate both user feedback interaction and the parametric shape prior model. Using data from publicly available prostate MR datasets, which includes several challenging clinical data sets, we highlighted the effectiveness and the capability of the proposed algorithm. Besides, the algorithm has been compared to several state-of-the-art methods.
similar objects (e.g., bladder close to prostate) within close proximity, such approaches have proven to be unsuccessful. In order to mitigate these problems, we proposed a new framework for bi-stage contours delineation algorithm based on Directional Active Contours (DAC) incorporating prior knowledge of the
prostate shape. We first explicitly addressed the prostate contour delineation problem based on fast globally DAC that incorporates both statistical and parametric shape prior model. In doing so, we were able to exploit the global aspects of contour delineation problem by incorporating a user feedback in contours delineation process where it is shown that only a small amount of user input can sometimes resolve ambiguous scenarios raised by DAC. In addition, once the prostate contours have been delineated, a cost functional is designed to incorporate both user feedback interaction and the parametric shape prior model. Using data from publicly available prostate MR datasets, which includes several challenging clinical data sets, we highlighted the effectiveness and the capability of the proposed algorithm. Besides, the algorithm has been compared to several state-of-the-art methods.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Article number | e02726 |
Number of pages | 37 |
Journal | International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering |
Volume | 31 |
Issue number | 11 |
Early online date | 24 Jun 2015 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Nov 2015 |