Volume segmentation in medical image analysis
M. M. Puranik, Shankar Muthu Krishnan · 2010
Volume segmentation is an important part of computer based medical applications for diagnosis and analysis of anatomical data. With rapid advances in medical imaging modalities and volume visualization techniques, computer based diagnosis is fast becoming a reality. These computer based tools allow scientists and physician to understand and diagnose anatomical structures by virtually interacting with them. Volume segmentation plays a critical role by facilitating automatic or semiautomatic extraction of the anatomical organ or region of interest. In this review we provide an introduction to various segmentation algorithms found in the literature. We classify the algorithms in to three categories: structural techniques, statistical technique and hybrid techniques. Under structural techniques we will review algorithms which take into consideration structural information for segmentation stochastic techniques are those which perform segmentation based on statistical analysis methods and under hybrid techniques we will review algorithms which make use of structural information in addition to statistical analysis.