Active contour based subthalamic nucleus segmentation on MRI
Kaiqiong Sun, Xuan Shang, Zhen Chen · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2009
In this paper, a novel region-based active surface model in a level set framework is proposed for subthalamic nucleus segmentation on MRI. The method is an extension of region based active contour in which the joint prior information of the object shape and the imaging intensity are utilized to drive the surface evolution in a level set formulation for segmentation. The mean surface area calculated from labeled samples is used as prior constraints of the object to segment. This feature and the intensity difference between object and background define a region-based force that drives a set of 3D surfaces towards the optimal segmentation. Specially, the pre-segmentation of visible structure within the region of interest constitutes an important step of subthalamic nucleus segmentation and the result forms confinement for the evolution domain of the surface, which enhances the validity of data term in the model.