Automatic extraction of the lower boundary of the mandibular bone in dental panoramic radiographs

Abstract

The paper presents a new technique for extraction of the lower mandibular bone boundary on dental panoramic radiographs. The proposed method can be the first step in examination of the morphology of the mandibular bone or in the computation of the cortical width. The described algorithm is robust against presence of the undesired structures that in an image. The technique was tested on 34 images. The results obtained are equivalent with the differences between boundaries hand drawn by radiologists. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.