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Towards Self-Parameterized Active Contours for Medical Image Segmentation with Emphasis on Abdomen

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Abstract

Medical doctors are typically required to segment medical images by means of computational tools, which suffer from parameters that are empirically selected through a cumbersome and time-consuming process. This chapter presents a framework for automated parameterization of region-based active contour regularization and data fidelity terms, which aims to relieve medical doctors from this process, as well as to enhance objectivity and reproducibility. Leaned on an observed isomorphism between the eigenvalues of structure tensors and active contour parameters, the presented framework automatically adjusts active contour parameters so as to reflect the orientation coherence in edge regions by means of the “orientation entropy.” To this end, the active contour is repelled from randomly oriented edge regions and is navigated towards structured ones, accelerating contour convergence. Experiments are conducted on abdominal imaging domains, which include colon and lung images. The experimental evaluation demonstrates that the presented framework is capable of speeding up contour convergence, whereas it achieves high-quality segmentation results, albeit in an unsupervised fashion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, University of Athens, Panepistimiopolis, Ilissia, 15703, Athens, Greece

    Eleftheria A. Mylona, Michalis A. Savelonas & Dimitris Maroulis

Authors
  1. Eleftheria A. Mylona
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  2. Michalis A. Savelonas
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  3. Dimitris Maroulis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dimitris Maroulis .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Bioengineering, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, USA

    Ayman S. El-Baz

  2. University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

    Luca Saba

  3. Biomedical Technologies, Inc Idaho State University (Affiliated), Roseville, California, USA

    Jasjit Suri

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Mylona, E.A., Savelonas, M.A., Maroulis, D. (2014). Towards Self-Parameterized Active Contours for Medical Image Segmentation with Emphasis on Abdomen. In: El-Baz, A., Saba, L., Suri, J. (eds) Abdomen and Thoracic Imaging. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8498-1_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8498-1_17

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-8497-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-8498-1

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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