A Geodesic voting shape prior to constrain the level set evolution for the segmentation of tubular trees

Abstract

This paper presents a geodesic voting method to segment tree structures, such as retinal or cardiac blood vessels. Many authors have used minimal cost paths, or similarly geodesics relative to a weight potential P, to find a vessel between two end points. Our goal focuses on the use of a set of such geodesic paths for finding a tubular tree structures, using minimal interaction. This work adapts the geodesic voting method that we have introduced for the segmentation of thin tree structures to the segmentation of tubular trees. The original approach of geodesic voting consists in computing geodesics from a set of end points scattered in the image to a given source point. The target structure corresponds to image points with a high geodesic density. Since the potential takes low values on the tree structure, geodesics will locate preferably on this structure and thus the geodesic density should be high. Geodesic voting method gives a good approximation of the localization of the tree branches, but it does not allow to extract the tubular aspect of the tree. Here, we use the geodesic voting method to build a shape prior to constrain the level set evolution in order to segment the boundary of the tubular structure. We show results of the segmentation with this approach on 2D angiogram images and 3D simulated data. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.