• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.343-344
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• 2009

The aim in this paper is to show how to extract scalp of a series of brain MR images by using region growing segmentation algorithm. Most researches are all forces on the segmentation of skull, gray matter, white matter and CSF. Prior to the segmentation of these inner objects in brain, we segmented the scalp and the brain from the MR images. The scalp mask makes us to quickly exclude background pixels with intensities similar those of the skull, while the brain mask obtained from our brain surface. We make use of connected threshold method (CTM) and confidence connected method (CCM). Both of them are two implementations of region growing in Insight Toolkit (ITK). By using these two methods, the results are displayed contrast in the form of 2D and 3D scalp images.

• Journal of International Society for Simulation Surgery
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.75-79
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• 2014

Purpose The region growing has a critical problem that it often extract vessels with unexpected objects such as a bone which has a similar intensity characteristics to the vessel. We propose the new method to extract arterial vascular anatomy around the stomach from the CTA volume without the post-processing. Materials and Methods Our method, which is also based on the region growing, requires the two seed points from the use. I automatically extracts perigastric arteries using the adaptive region growing method and it does not need any post-processing. Results The three region growing based methods are used to extract perigastric arteries - the conventional region growings with restrict and loose thresholds each and the proposed method. The 3D visualization from the result of our method shows our method extracted the all required arteries for gastric surgery. Conclusion By extracting perigastric arteries using the proposed method, over-segmentation problem that unexpected anatomical objects such as a rib or backbone are also segmented does not occurs anymore. The proposed method does not need to sensitively determine the thresholds of the similarity function. By visualizing the result, the preoperative simulation of arterial vascular anatomy around the stomach can be possible.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.33 no.11
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• pp.942-952
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• 2006

We propose an automatic segmentation method for identifying pulmonary structures using gray-level information of chest CT images. Our method consists of following five steps. First, to segment pulmonary structures based on the difference of gray-level value, we select the threshold using optimal thresholding. Second, we separate the thorax from the background air and then the lungs and airways from the thorax by applying the inverse operation of 2D region growing in chest CT images. To eliminate non-pulmonary structures which has similar intensities with the lungs, we use 3D connected component labeling. Third, we segment the trachea and left and right mainstem bronchi using 3D branch-based region growing in chest CT images. Fourth, we can obtain accurate lung boundaries by subtracting the result of third step from the result of second step. Finally, we select the threshold in accordance with histogram analysis and then segment radio-dense pulmonary vessels by applying gray-level thresholding to the result of the second step. To evaluate the accuracy of proposed method, we make a visual inspection of segmentation result of lungs, airways and pulmonary vessels. We compare the result of the conventional region growing with the result of proposed 3D branch-based region growing. Experimental results show that our proposed method extracts lung boundaries, airways, and pulmonary vessels automatically and accurately.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2009.01a
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• pp.562-565
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• 2009

This paper describes an automatic 3-dimensional (3D) segmentation method for 3D CT (Computed Tomography) images using region growing (RG) and edge detection techniques. Specifically, an augmented RG method in which the contours of regions are extracted by a 3D digital edge detection filter is presented. The feature of this method is the capability of preventing the leakage of regions which is a defect of conventional RG method. Experimental results applied to the extraction of teeth from 3D CT data of jaw bones show that teeth are correctly extracted by the proposed method.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.201-212
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• 2000

본 논문에서는 인공고관절과 환자의 고관절 부위를 각각 3차원 영상화한 후에 이들의 정합도 (fitness)를 측정하여 수치적인 정보로 제공함으로써 환자의 체형에 적합한 인공고관절을 선택하고, 더 나아가 정확한 시술방향과 시술깊이를 제공할 수 있는 모의시술시스템을 제시하였다. 이를 위해 region growing 기법등을 이용하여 환자의 CT 영상을 3차원화하고, 또한 인공고관절을 projection 기법 등을 통해 3차원 영상화하였으며, 지금까지 인공고관절 정합도 측정에 사용했던 단순한 단면적 비교방식과는 달리 삽입의 균일성도 가늠할 수 있는 새로운 정합도 측정 방식을 고안하여 적용하였다. 다양한 실험과 분석을 통하여 새로 제안한 정합도 측정 방법의 정확성과 우수함을 확인할 수 있었으며, 본 논문에서 제시하는 모의 시술시스템은 향후 정형외과 분야에서 인공무릎과 같은 다른 영역에서의 시술 보조 시스템으로도 응용될 수 있을 뿐만 아니라, 인공관절의 국산화 및 주문제작 등에성도 많은 활용을 할 수 있을 것으로 기대된다.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.1383-1391
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• 2011

Following the appearance of the latest medical equipment with improved function, the importance of image analysis which enables effective image processing and analysis consistent with the hardware performance is on the rise. As well as, ongoing study is being done on the 2D medical image processing and 3D reconstruction. This paper segments chest CT images into each stage and finally shows 3D reconstruction of each segmented result. Among various image segmentation methods, Region Growing and apply sharpening and Gamma Controller as for image improvement for effective segmentation, image segmentation in order of bronchus and lung, bronchus, lung. Human organs image of segmented is use VTK(Visualization Toolkit) to make 3D reconstruction, two and three-dimensional medical image processing and analysis for lesions diagnosis are able to utilized.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.21 no.3 s.61
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• pp.239-246
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• 2000

In this paper. we propose a semi-automatic segmentation algorithm to extract organ in 3D medical data by using a manually segmentation result in a sing1e slice. Generally region glowing based tracking method consists of 3 steps object projection. seed extraction and boundary decision by region growing. But because the boundary between organs in medical data is vague, improper seeds make the boundary dig into the organ or extend to the false region. In the proposed algorithm seeds are carefully extracted to find suitable boundaries between organs after region growing. And the jagged boundary at low gradient region after region growing is corrected by post-processing using Fourier descriptor. Also two-path tracking make it possible to catch up newly appeared areas. The proposed algorithm provides satisfactory results in segmenting 1 mm distance kidneys from X-rav CT body image set of 82 slices.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.1641-1644
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• 2004

3차원 볼륨데이터에서 분할 대상영역의 밝기 값이 다양하면서 밝기 값이 유사한 영역과 인접한 경우 3차원 영역확장(region growing) 방법을 사용하여 영역을 분할하기 위해서는 영역확장의 중요한 요인인 동질성 기준 값의 적절한 선택이 요구된다. 본 논문에서는 영역 복셀(voxel)의 1차 미분 값의 크기인 기울기 크기(gradient magnitude)만으로 영역의 경계를 찾기가 쉽지않은 대상의 분할을 위해 볼륨데이터의 지역적인 밝기 값의 변화의 특징을 고려하면서 분할 대상영역의 복셀의 2차 미분(second partial derivation)을 행렬의 요소(element)로 갖는 Hessian 행렬의 고유치(eigenvalue)를 영역확장의 문턱치 결정에 이용하였다. 제안한 알고리즘은 3차원 영역확장의 결과에 가장 큰 영향을 미치는 적절한 문턱치의 선택으로 대상영역의 분할을 성공적으로 수행하여 3차원 영역확장의 단점을 보완하였다.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.347-370
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• 2019

In the computer-aided detection (CAD) system of pulmonary nodules, a high false positive rate is common because the density and the computed tomography (CT) values of the vessel and the nodule in the CT images are similar, which affects the detection accuracy of pulmonary nodules. In this paper, a method of automatic detection of pulmonary nodules based on multi-scale enhancement filters and 3D shape features is proposed. The method uses an iterative threshold and a region growing algorithm to segment lung parenchyma. Two types of multi-scale enhancement filters are constructed to enhance the images of nodules and blood vessels in 3D lung images, and most of the blood vessel images in the nodular images are removed to obtain a suspected nodule image. An 18 neighborhood region growing algorithm is then used to extract the lung nodules. A new pulmonary nodules feature descriptor is proposed, and the features of the suspected nodules are extracted. A support vector machine (SVM) classifier is used to classify the pulmonary nodules. The experimental results show that our method can effectively detect pulmonary nodules and reduce false positive rates, and the feature descriptor proposed in this paper is valid which can be used to distinguish between nodules and blood vessels.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.127-132
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• 2001

의료 영상에서 관심 있는 부위를 3차원으로 재구성하여 보는 것은, 정확한 진단을 위해서 매우 중요하다. 이러한 3차원 재구성을 위해서는 관심 있는 영역의 분할이 필수적인 선행작업이다. 본 논문에서는 관도계 기관의 분할을 위해서 슬라이스 영상의 정보를 이용한 3차원 영역 성장법을 제안한다. 제안된 방법은 2차원 슬라이스 영상에서 영역 성장법에 의해 영역을 확장시키고, 그 이웃한 슬라이스들에 씨앗점을 전달하여 재귀적으로 3차원 체적을 확장하여 영상을 분할한다. 이때, 이웃한 슬라이스간의 영역의 크기의 제약을 이용하여 새나감을 방지한다. 제안된 방법을 기관지의 분할에 적용한 결과, 새나감 없이 뾰족한 가지들까지도 성공적으로 분할했으며, 튜브의 중심 축이 고차원 곡선인 경우에도 성공적으로 분할했다.