A new shape based segmentation framework using statistical and variational methods

In this paper, we propose a new shape based segmentation and registration of the vertebral bodies (VBs) in clinical computed tomography (CT) images. The VB and surrounding organs have very close gray level information and there are no strong edges in some CT images. To overcome these challenges, image appearance and shape information of VBs are used. There are three phases of our experiments: i) the detection of the VB region using the Matched filter, ii) initial segmentation using the graph cuts which integrates the intensity and spatial interaction models, iii) registration of the shape priors and initially segmented region to obtain the final segmentation. Preliminary results show that our proposed algorithm gives very encouraging results and can solve many segmentation and registration problems.