3D Vertebral Body Segmentation Using Shape Based Graph Cuts

Bone mineral density (BMD) measurements and fracture analysis of the spine bones are restricted to the Vertebral bodies (VBs). In this paper, we propose a novel 3D shape based method to segment VBs in clinical computed tomography (CT) images without any user intervention. The proposed method depends on both image appearance and shape information. 3D shape information is obtained from a set of training data sets. Then, we estimate the shape variations using a distance probabilistic model which approximates the marginal densities of the VB and background in the variability region. To segment a VB, the Matched filter is used to detect the VB region automatically. We align the detected volume with 3D shape prior in order to be used in distance probabilistic model. Then, the graph cuts method which integrates the linear combination of Gaussians (LCG), Markov Gibbs Random Field (MGRF), and distance probabilistic model obtained from 3D shape prior is used. Experiments on the data sets show that the proposed segmentation approach is more accurate than other known alternatives.