Detection and Segmentation by Shape and Appearance

Abstract

Object detection in medical image analysis can be modeled as a search for an object model in the image. The model describes attributes such as shape and the appearance of the object. The search consists of fitting instances of the model to the data. A quality-of-fit measure determines whether one or several objects have been found. Generating the model for a structure of interest can be difficult. It has to include knowledge about the acceptable variation of attributes within an object class while remaining suitably discriminative. Several techniques to generate and use object models will be presented in this chapter. Information about acceptable object variation in these models is either generated from training or it is part of the model prototype.