Segmenting the Subthalamic Nucleus Using Narrow Band Limited Variational Level Set Method

We describe a novel variational level set based method for delineating the sub thalamic nucleus (STN) region of human brains from magnetic resonance (MR) images. Based on the understanding of specific imaging characteristic of STN, we apply a narrow band limitation in the region-based energy function for localizing the STN from initial contour information provided by doctors. The validity of the algorithm was tested on practical Parkinson´s Patients´ T1-weighted magnetic resonance images. Comparing to traditional edge-based and global region-based level set methods, our method achieves more reliable segmentation results. Also, our method is insensitive to the initial contour placement, making it applicable in practical surgical navigations.