• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.342-352
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• 2014

This paper proposes an automatic segmentation method of cortical bone and trabecular bone and describes an implementation of structural analysis method of trabecular bone in micro-CT images. The proposed segmentation method extract bone region with binarization using a threshold value. Next, it finds adjacent contour lines from outer boundary line into inward direction and sets candidate regions of cortical bone. Next it remove cortical bone region by finding the candidate cortical region of which the average pixel value is maximum. We implemented the method which computes four structural indicators BV/TV, Tb.Th, Tb.Sp, Tb.N by using VTK(Visualization ToolKit) and sphere fitting algorithm. We applied the implemented method to twenty proximal femur of mouses and compared with the manual segmentation method. Experimental result shows that the average error rates between the proposed segmentation method and the manual segmentation method are less than 3% for the four structural indicatiors. This result means that the proposed method can be used instead of the combersome and time consuming manual segmentation method.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.713-720
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• 2007

In image-guided surgery, automatic bone segmentation of Computed Tomography (CT) images is an important but challenging step. Previous attempts include intensity-, edge-, region-, and deformable curve-based approaches [1], but none claims fully satisfactory performance. Although active contour (AC) techniques possess many excellent characteristics, their applications in CT image segmentation have not worthily exploited yet. In this study, we have evaluated the automaticity and performance of the model of Chan-Vese Multiphase AC Without Edges towards knee bone segmentation from CT images. This model is suitable because it is initialization-insensitive and topology-adaptive. Its segmentation results have been qualitatively compared with those from four other widely used AC models: namely Gradient Vector Flow (GVF) AC, Geometric AC, Geodesic AC, and GVF Fast Geometric AC. To quantitatively evaluate its performance, the results from a commercial software and a medical expert have been used. The evaluation results show that the Chan-Vese model provides superior performance with least user interaction, proving its suitability for automatic bone segmentation from CT images.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.332-337
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• 2007

In the early twenty-first century, minimally invasive surgery is the mainstay of various kinds of surgical fields. Surgeons gave percutaneously surgical treatment of the screw directly using a fluoroscopic view in the past. The latest date, they began to operate the fractured carpal bone surgery using Computerized Tomography (CT). Carpal bones composed of wrist joint consist of eight small bones which have hexahedron and sponge shape. Because of these shape, it is difficult to grasp the shape of carpal bones using only CT image data. Although several image segmentation studies have been conducted with carpal bone CT image data, more studies about carpal bone using CT data are still required. Especially, to apply the software implemented from the studies to clinical fIeld, the outcomes should be user friendly and very accurate. To satisfy those conditions, we propose modified multi-seed region growing segmentation method which uses simple threshold and the canny edge detector for finding edge information more accurately. This method is able to use very easily and gives us high accuracy and high speed for extracting the edge information of carpal bones. Especially, using multi-seed points, multi-bone objects of the carpal bone are extracted simultaneously.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.348-354
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• 2008

Segmenting vessels in lower extremity CT images is very difficult because of gray level variation, connection to bones, and their small sizes. Instead of segmenting vessels, we propose an approach that segments bones and subtracts them from the original CT images. The subtracted images can contain not only connected vessel structures but also isolated vessels, which are very difficult to detect using conventional vessel segmentation methods. The proposed method initially grows a 3-dimensional (3D) volume with a seeded region growing (SRG) using an adaptive threshold and then detects junctions and forked branches. The forked branches are classified into either bone branches or vessel branches based on appearance, shape, size change, and moving velocity of the branch. The final volume is re-grown by collecting connected bone branches. The algorithm has produced promising results for segmenting bone structures in several tens of vessel-enhanced CT image data sets of lower extremities.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2000.11c
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• pp.177-180
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• 2000

CT images are sequential images that provide medical doctors helpful information for treatment and surgical operation. It is also widely used for the 3D reconstruction of human bone and organs. In the 3D reconstruction, the quality of the reconstructed 3D model heavily depends on the segmentation results. In this paper, we propose an algorithm suitable for the segmentation of teeth and the maxilofacial bone.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.139-146
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• 2023

Osteoporosis is a disease in which the risk of bone fractures increases due to a decrease in bone density caused by aging. Osteoporosis is diagnosed by measuring bone density in the total hip, femoral neck, and lumbar spine. To accurately measure bone density in the lumbar spine, the vertebral region must be segmented from the lumbar X-ray image. Deep learning-based automatic spinal segmentation methods can provide fast and precise information about the vertebral region. In this study, we used 695 lumbar spine images as training and test datasets for a deep learning segmentation model. We proposed a lumbar automatic segmentation model, CM-Net, which combines the center point of the spine and the modified U-Net network. As a result, the average Dice Similarity Coefficient(DSC) was 0.974, precision was 0.916, recall was 0.906, accuracy was 0.998, and Area under the Precision-Recall Curve (AUPRC) was 0.912. This study demonstrates a high-performance automatic segmentation model for lumbar X-ray images, which overcomes noise such as spinal fractures and implants. Furthermore, we can perform accurate measurement of bone density on lumbar X-ray images using an automatic segmentation methodology for the spine, which can prevent the risk of compression fractures at an early stage and improve the accuracy and efficiency of osteoporosis diagnosis.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.1407-1416
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to train a model for the ulna and radius bone segmentation based on Convolutional Neural Networks and to verify the segmentation model. The data consisted of 840 training data, 210 tuning data, and 200 verification data. The learning model for the ulna and radius bone bwas based on U-Net (19 convolutional and 8 maximum pooling) and trained with 8 batch sizes, 0.0001 learning rate, and 200 epochs. As a result, the average sensitivity of the training data was 0.998, the specificity was 0.972, the accuracy was 0.979, and the Dice's similarity coefficient was 0.968. In the validation data, the average sensitivity was 0.961, specificity was 0.978, accuracy was 0.972, and Dice's similarity coefficient was 0.961. The performance of deep convolutional neural network based models for the segmentation was good for ulna and radius bone.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.73-80
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• 2012

Recently, medical equipments are developed and used for diagnosis or studies. In addition, demand of techniques which automatically deal with three dimensional medical images obtained from the medical equipments is growing. One of the techniques is automatic bone segmentation which is expected to enhance the diagnosis efficiency of osteoporosis, fracture, and other bone diseases. Although various researches have been proposed to solve it, they are unable to be used in practice since a size of the medical data is large and there are many low contrast boundaries with other tissues. In this paper, we present a fast and accurate automatic framework for bone segmentation based on multi-resolutions. On a low resolution step, a position of the bone is roughly detected using constrained branch and mincut which find the optimal template from the training set. Then, the segmentation and the registration are iteratively conducted on the multiple resolutions. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, we make an experiment with femur and tibia from 50 test knee magnetic resonance images using 100 training set. The proposed method outperformed the constrained branch and mincut in aspect of segmentation accuracy and implementation time.

• Imaging Science in Dentistry
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.7-13
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• 2015

Purpose: We have developed a new method of segmenting the areas of absorbable implants and bone using region-based segmentation of micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) images, which allowed us to quantify volumetric bone-implant contact (VBIC) and volumetric absorption (VA). Materials and Methods: The simple threshold technique generally used in micro-CT analysis cannot be used to segment the areas of absorbable implants and bone. Instead, a region-based segmentation method, a region-labeling method, and subsequent morphological operations were successively applied to micro-CT images. The three-dimensional VBIC and VA of the absorbable implant were then calculated over the entire volume of the implant. Two-dimensional (2D) bone-implant contact (BIC) and bone area (BA) were also measured based on the conventional histomorphometric method. Results: VA and VBIC increased significantly with as the healing period increased (p<0.05). VBIC values were significantly correlated with VA values (p<0.05) and with 2D BIC values (p<0.05). Conclusion: It is possible to quantify VBIC and VA for absorbable implants using micro-CT analysis using a region-based segmentation method.

• Journal of International Society for Simulation Surgery
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.67-70
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• 2015

We propose an automatic vessel segmentation method of vertebral arteries in CT angiography using combined circular and cylindrical model fitting. First, to generate multi-segmented volumes, whole volume is automatically divided into four segments by anatomical properties of bone structures along z-axis of head and neck. To define an optimal volume circumscribing vertebral arteries, anterior-posterior bounding and side boundaries are defined as initial extracted vessel region. Second, the initial vessel candidates are tracked using circular model fitting. Since boundaries of the vertebral arteries are ambiguous in case the arteries pass through the transverse foramen in the cervical vertebra, the circle model is extended along z-axis to cylinder model for considering additional vessel information of neighboring slices. Finally, the boundaries of the vertebral arteries are detected using graph-cut optimization. From the experiments, the proposed method provides accurate results without bone artifacts and eroded vessels in the cervical vertebra.