Measurement of bone cyst fluid volume using k-means clustering

We designed a semiautomatic segmentation method to easily measure the volume of a bone cyst (simple or aneurysmal) from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This method only considers the fluid part of the cyst, even when there are several fluid intensities (fluid-fluid levels) or the cyst is multi-loculated. The nonhomogeneity phenomenon inherent in MRI was handled by a k-means clustering algorithm that classified all of the voxels corresponding to the cyst fluid as the same voxel intensity. Level-set segmentation was expanded into the whole cyst volume and the resulting segmented volume provided the measured cyst volume. The semiautomatic method was compared with the usual manual method (manual contour tracing) in terms of its ability to measure a known volume of water (gold standard) as well as the volume of 29 bone cysts. Both methods were equivalent with regards to the gold standard, but the semiautomatic method was more accurate. In terms of the experimental measurements, the semiautomatic method was more repeatable and reproducible, and less time-consuming and fastidious than the manual method. Our semiautomatic method uses only freeware and can be used routinely whenever measurement of a bone cyst volume is needed.