Model-based Auto-Segmentation of Knee Bones and Cartilage in MRI Data

Abstract

We present a method for fully automatic segmentation of the bones and cartilages of the human knee from MRI data. Based on statistical shape models and graph-based optimization, first the femoral and tibial bone surfaces are reconstructed. Starting from the bone surfaces the cartilages are segmented simultaneously with a multi object technique using prior knowledge on the variation of cartilage thickness. We validate our method on 40 clinical MRI datasets acquired before knee replacement.