Spinal curvature determination from an X-ray image using a deformable model

Abstract

This paper presents a spinal curvature determination from frontal X-ray images of scoliotic patients. A new deformable model, Modified CPM (Charged Particles Model), has been developed and used to determine the spinal curvature. The Modified CPM is a new approach of a deformable model based on CPM, which was introduced in 2004. The X-ray image is charged negatively according to the edge-map or gradient-magnitude image. The particles are attracted towards the contour of the object of interest, because this contour is very dark, thus charged very negatively. We modified the CPM by putting springs between the particles to prevent the particles from moving away and keep the movement of the particles in the appropriate distance without reducing the flexibility to follow the curvature. The results of the implementation show the effectiveness of the modified charged-particle model for spinal curvature determination on X-ray images.