Lymph node segmentation using active contours
David M. Honea, Yaorong Ge, Wesley E. Snyder, Paul F. Hemler, David J. Vining · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1997
Node volume analysis is very important medically. An automatic method of segmenting the node in spiral CT x-ray images is needed to produce accurate, consistent, and efficient volume measurements. The method of active contours (snakes) is proposed here as good solution to the node segmentation problem. Optimum parameterization and search strategies for using a two-dimensional snake to find node cross-sections are described, and an energy normalization scheme which preserves important spatial variations in energy is introduced. Three-dimensional segmentation is achieved without additional operator interaction by propagating the 2D results to adjacent slices. The method gives promising segmentation results on both simulated and real node images.