Automatic landmark detection and scan range delimitation for topogram images using hierarchical network
Wei Zhang, Frederic Mantlic, S. Kevin Zhou · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2010
The topogram is a 2D projection image of human body formed using a Computed Tomography (CT) scanner. It could be used to delimitate the desired scan range for further precise 3D CT scan. In this paper, we present a robust and efficient system for automatically determining scan ranges and their associated anatomical landmarks for topogram images. The system could handle the cases when only about 50% of the desired regions are visible. The robustness of our system can be attributed to three key ingredients: 1. The detection is based on a hierarchical network; 2. Network optimization is based on sequentially optimizing a set of subnetworks; 3. The detection probability is further refined based on the detection context. Extensive experiments (including external testing) on over 1000 topogram images show that our approach works robustly and efficiently even on very challenging data.