Comparison of vessel segmentations using STAPLE

Abstract

We propose a novel method for the validation of vascular segmentations. Our technique combines morphological operators and the STAPLE algorithm to obtain ground truth of centerline extractions as well as a measure of accuracy of the methods to be compared. Moreover, our method can be extended to the validation of any open-curves. We also present a comparison study of three vascular segmentation methods: ridge traversal, statistical and curves level set. They are compared with manual segmentations from five experts. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.