Mesenteric vasculature-guided small bowel segmentation on high-resolution 3D CT angiography scans

Due to the low image contrast and high tortuosity of the small bowel on CT scans, it is difficult for even experienced radiologists to localize small bowel. To facilitate this, we propose a novel mesenteric vasculature-guided method for small bowel region segmentation on high-resolution contrast-enhanced CT angiography (CTA) scans. It is essential and useful for further localizing small bowel tumors. The mesenteric vasculature is first segmented using multi-view multi-scale vesselness enhancement filters on maximum intensity projection images. Second, the small bowel region is automatically segmented based on the map of mesenteric vasculature and its relationship to the small bowel. The method is applied to high-resolution contrast-enhanced abdominal CTA scans of patients suspected of having carcinoid tumors. The result, 79.3% volume overlap accuracy compared with the reference standard, shows it is feasible to segment the small bowel using the mesenteric vasculature as a roadmap on CTA scans.