Corner Points Detection for Vertebral Mobility Analysis

In this paper we introduce a new segmentation approach used to detect the location and the orientation of the cervical vertebrae in medical x-ray images. A first pre-processing step consists on determining a global polygonal region for each vertebra. After this, we propose a new approach of vertebra localization by extracting the anterior faces of vertebra contours. This approach is based on automatic corner points of interest detection using the Harris operator. A specific goal of the proposed application is to create an efficient semi-automated method of identifying the overall angle of curvature of the spine and the angles between vertebrae.