Segmentation of Kidney Cortex in MRI Studies using a Constrained Morphological 3D H-maxima Transform

We present a method based on the morphological 3D h-maxima transform to segment the kidneys in image volumes obtained by magnetic resonance imaging after injection of a contrast agent. Manual cropping techniques had been heavily relied upon to sever connections to other organs (arteries, liver, spleen, intestines, etc.) when routine methods produced oversegmented results. We show that simply generated rectangular masks and edge information may be incorporated to guide the segmentation. This approach is particularly useful when severe pathology or congenital abnormalities are present as no prior information about location or appearance is assumed. Results and validation from experiments on a number of selected MR datasets are demonstrated