Automatic Liver Segmentation of a Contrast Enhanced CT Image Using an Improved Partial Histogram Threshold Algorithm

  • Seo Kyung-Sik (Electrical & Computer Engineering, New Mexico State University) ;
  • Park Seung-Jin (Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, College of Medicine, Chonnam National University)
  • Published : 2005.06.01

Abstract

This paper proposes an automatic liver segmentation method using improved partial histogram threshold (PHT) algorithms. This method removes neighboring abdominal organs regardless of random pixel variation of contrast enhanced CT images. Adaptive multi-modal threshold is first performed to extract a region of interest (ROI). A left PHT (LPHT) algorithm is processed to remove the pancreas, spleen, and left kidney. Then a right PHT (RPHT) algorithm is performed for eliminating the right kidney from the ROI. Finally, binary morphological filtering is processed for removing of unnecessary objects and smoothing of the ROI boundary. Ten CT slices of six patients (60 slices) were selected to evaluate the proposed method. As evaluation measures, an average normalized area and area error rate were used. From the experimental results, the proposed automatic liver segmentation method has strong similarity performance as the MSM by medical Doctor.

Keywords

References

  1. K. T. Bae, M. L. Giger, C. T. Chen, and Jr. C. E. Kahn, 'Automatic segmentation of liver structure in CT images', Med. Phys., Vol. 20, pp. 71-78, 1993 https://doi.org/10.1118/1.597064
  2. L. Gao, D. G. Heath, B. S. Kuszyk, and E. K. Fishman, 'Automatic liver segmentation techn- ique for three-dimensional visualization of CT data', Radiology, Vol. 201, pp. 359-364, 1996 https://doi.org/10.1148/radiology.201.2.8888223
  3. D. Tsai, 'Automatic segmentation of liver struc- ture in CT images using a neural network', IEICE Trans. Fundamentals, Vol.E77-A, No. 11, pp. 1892-1895, 1994
  4. S. A. Husain and E. Shigeru, 'Use of neural networks for feature based recognition of liver region on CT images', Neural Networks for Sig. Proc.-Proceedings of the IEEE Work., Vol.2, pp. 831-840, 2000
  5. K. S. Seo, L. C. Ludeman, S. J. Park, and J. A. Park, 'Efficient liver segmentation based on the spine', LNCS 3261, pp. 400-409, 2004
  6. K. S. Seo, S. J. Park, and J. A. Park, 'Fully automatic liver segmentation based on the morphological property of a CT image', Korean J. of Med. Phy., Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 70-76, 2004
  7. L. G. Shapiro and G. C. Stockman, Computer Vision, Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2001
  8. S. J. Orfanidis, Introduction to signal Processing, Prentice Hall. Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1996
  9. R. J. Schilling and S. L. Harris, Applied Numer- ical Methods for Engineers, Brooks/Cole Publishing Com., Pacific Grove, CA, 2000
  10. I. Pitas, Digital Image Processing Algorithms and Applications, Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York, NY, 2000
  11. B. Jahne, Digital Image Processing, 5th., Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, 2002
  12. Sungkee Lee, 'Extraction of the liver from computed tomography using co-occurrence b matrix', J. Biomed. Eng. Res., Vol. 22, No.1, pp. 9-17, 2001