Automatic Retrieval of Anatomical Structures in 3D Medical Images

This paper describes a method to automatically generate the mapping between a completely labeled reference image and the 3D medical image of a patient. To achieve this, we combined three techniques: the extraction of 3D feature lines, their matching using 3D deformable line models, the extension of the deformation to the whole image space using warping techniques. We present experimental results for the segmentation of structures in Magnetic Resonance images of the brain of different patients; the segmentation of the cortical and ventricle structures. We emphasize the advantages of using crest lines deformable models prior to surface based models. This gives a sparser representation of the data, easier to manipulate, and which makes the convergence of the model much less sensitive to initial positionning. In the future, we hope to use this method to generate anatomical atlases, by the automatic interpretation of large sets of 3D medical images.