A new strategy for boundary surface detection in 3D biomedical images

Detecting boundary surface for the object of interest within 3D biomedical images is an important step towards understanding and quantitative analysis of the object. However, existing 3D edge detection techniques have the limitations in detecting connected edge voxels and tracing undetected edge voxels from 3D images. In this paper, we propose a new strategy to detect boundary surface for the object of interest in 3D biomedical image. The new strategy utilizes the connectivity of boundary surface in the detection and tracing of edge voxels, and is much effective in overcoming the two limitations existing in 3D edge detectors. The performance and advantages of the proposed method are illustrated by many examples from different 3D biomedical images.