The Contour Detection and Extraction for Medical Images of Knee Joint

In clinical medicine, CT or MRI scanning is often carried out on the parts of the human body in order to diagnose and treat diseases. When it is needed to establish a model of different parts of human body for biomechanical analysis, the geometrical data to establish model could be obtained through the scanned images. In the paper, the contour detection and extraction for medical CT images of knee joint are implemented through the designed Visual Basic 6.0 (VB) program. The contour detective algorithms include: first-order differential operators, such as Roberts Cross operator and Sobel operator; second-order differential operator, such as Laplacian and Canny operators. And the chain code method is used for the contour extraction. Through this designed program it provides the foundation for independent development of medical image processing program and for the building from medical images to the geometric model of human body.