The shape language application to evaluation of the vertebra syndesmophytes development progress

Abstract

In this paper, a measure for assessment the progress of pathological changes in spine bones is introduced. The definition of the measure is based on a syntactic description of geometric features of the bone contours. The proposed approach is applied for analysis of vertebra syndesmophytes in X-ray images of the spine. It turns out that the proposed measure assesses the progress of the disease effectively. The results obtained by the algorithm based on the introduced measure are consistent with the assessment done by an expert.