An Efficient Method for Segmentation of MRI Spine Images

The study of the segmentation of MRI Spine Image is of crucial importance for computer aided medical image identifying and clinical studies of neurological pathology. Computer characterization of a vertebra or disk is of limited clinical value if that structure cannot be accurately segmented and identified. However, Manual operations of tracking these structures are so tedious that automated method of spine tracking and segmentation are in high demand. In this paper, a vertebral disks segmentation method is proposed. The method can locate and label the disks through locating the spinal cord with Hough Transform. The efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated by experiments using real MR images provided by College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati.