A new fuzzy skeletonization algorithm and its applications to medical imaging

Abstract

Skeletonization provides a simple yet compact representation of an object and is widely used in medical imaging applications including volumetric, structural, and topological analyses, object representation, stenoses detection, path-finding etc. Literature of three-dimensional skeletonization is quite matured for binary digital objects. However, the challenges of skeletonization for fuzzy objects are mostly unanswered. Here, a framework and an algorithm for fuzzy surface skeletonization are developed using a notion of fuzzy grassfire propagation which will minimize binarization related data loss. Several concepts including fuzzy axial voxels, local and global significance factors are introduced. A skeletal noise pruning algorithm using global significance factors as significance measures of individual branches is developed. Results of application of the algorithm on several medical objects have been illustrated. A quantitative comparison with an ideal skeleton has demonstrated that the algorithm can achieve sub-voxel accuracies at various levels of noise and downsampling. The role of fuzzy skeletonization in thickness computation at relatively low resolution has been demonstrated. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.