Level set segmentation of lumbar vertebrae using appearance models

Abstract

For the planning of surgical interventions of the spine exact knowledge about 3D shape and the local bone quality of vertebrae are of great importance in order to estimate the anchorage strength of screws or implants. As a prerequisite for quantitative analysis a method for objective and therefore automated segmentation of vertebrae is needed. In this paper a framework for the automatic segmentation of vertebrae using 3D appearance models in a level set framework is presented. In this framework model information as well as gradient information and probabilities of pixel intensities at object edges in the unseen image are used. The method is tested on 29 lumbar vertebrae leading to accurate results, which can be useful for surgical planning and further analysis of the local bone quality.