Interactive segmentation of multi-dimensional medical data with contour-based application of genetic algorithms

Abstract

The authors describe a method for contour-based segmentation of anatomical structures in tomographic images. The method requires three steps. First the authors manually trace one or more 2D contours of a structure of interest. Such contours are then used as training examples in designing a nonlinear edge-detector using a genetic algorithm. Finally, by applying the edge detector to the whole dataset the authors perform a 3D segmentation and surface reconstruction. Results obtained on magnetic resonance images of the brain are also reported.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>