A FEM deformable mesh for active region segmentation

We propose a novel template-based multi-region segmentation method using a finite element method (FEM) deformation model with diffusion-based regularization. Our proposed method is computationally more efficient than the traditional template-based segmentation methods that use non-parametric or B-spline based deformation models, as it significantly reduces the number of degrees of freedom (DOF) associated with the energy minimization that arises in template-based segmentation. Further, like all template-based segmentation approaches our method is able to preserve topology of the initial regions of interest (ROIs) defined in the template, which is very useful for segmentation of anatomical structures. Segmentation results on medical images with various anatomical structures show that the proposed method improves computational efficiency without compromising segmentation accuracy.