Bone profiles: Simple, fast, and reliable spine localization in CT scans

Abstract

Algorithms centered around spinal columns in CT data such as spinal canal detection, disk and vertebra localization and segmentation are known to be computationally intensive and memory demanding. Themajority of these algorithms need initialization and try to reduce the search space to a minimum. In this work we introduce bone profiles as a simple means to compute a tight ROI containing the spine and seed points within the spinal canal. Bone profiles rely on the distribution of bone intensity values in axial slices. They are easy to understand, and parameters guiding the ROI and seed point detection are straight forward to derive. The method has been validated with two datasets containing 52 general and 242 spine-focused CT scans. Average runtimes of 1.5 and 0.4 s are reported on a single core. Due to its slice-wise nature, the method can be easily parallelized and fractions of the reported runtimes can be further achieved. Our memory requirements are upper bounded by a single CT slice.