Ribcage Boundary Delineation in Chest X-ray Images

Abstract

We propose a method for segmenting the ribcage boundary of digital postero-anterior chest X-ray images. The segmentation is achieved by first defining image landmarks: the center of the ribcage and, using polar transformation from this point, two initial points belonging to the ribcage. A bank of Gabor filters (in analogy with the simple cells present in the human visual cortex) is used to obtain an orientation edges enhanced image. In this enhanced image, an edge following, starting from the landmarks previously determined, is performed for delineating the left and right sections of the ribcage. The complete segmentation is then accomplished by connecting these sections with the top section of the ribcage, obtained by means of spline interpolation. © Springer-Verlag 2004.