Segmentation of trabecular bones from Vertebral bodies in volumetric CT spine images

We present a 3D segmentation technique of trabecular (cancellous) bones in CT images of Vertebral bodies (VBs). In order to be used for Bone Mineral Density (BMD) measurements, the cortical and trabecular bones are subsequently segmented using graph cuts method and local volume growing methods separately. In the final step, we measure our segmentation accuracy for each method. Validity was analyzed using ground truths of data sets and the European Spine Phantom (ESP). Preliminary results are very encouraging and a reproducibility of the results was achieved for 16 data sets. The average segmentation error is below 2.0% for both methods.