A general method for the identification and repair of concavities in segmented medical images
William F. Sensakovic, A Starkey, Samuel G. Armato · 2008
The segmentation of structures of interest in medical images can result in segmentation boundaries demonstrating two types of concavities: natural and incorrect. This study introduces a generalized method for identification and repair of incorrect concavities. Previous methods are framed in terms of the generalized method and new techniques for concavity identification, α -hull, and repair, active contours, are applied. The application of α -hulls also creates a natural hierarchy on concavities that leads to more efficient computations for both the characterization and repair of concavities. The generalized method is evaluated on a database of juxtapleural nodules and compared against two other methods: convex hull and morphological closing operator. The generalized method demonstrates the best overall tradeoff between juxtapleural nodule inclusion and incorrect inclusion of non-nodule tissue from surrounding structures.