A method and software for segmentation of anatomic object ensembles by deformable m-reps.

Deformable shape models (DSMs) comprise a general approach that shows great promise for automatic image segmentation. Published studies by others and our own research results strongly suggest that segmentation of a normal or near-normal object from 3D medical images will be most successful when the DSM approach uses (1) knowledge of the geometry of not only the target anatomic object but also the ensemble of objects providing context for the target object and (2) knowledge of the image intensities to be expected relative to the geometry of the target and contextual objects. The segmentation will be most efficient when the deformation operates at multiple object-related scales and uses deformations that include not just local translations but the biologically important transformations of bending and twisting, i.

Deformable M-Reps for 3D Medical Image Segmentation.

(formerly called DSLs) are a multiscale medial means for modeling and rendering 3D solid geometry. They are particularly well suited to model anatomic objects and in particular to capture prior geometric information effectively in deformable models segmentation approaches. The representation is based on , which define objects at coarse scale by a hierarchy of figures - each figure generally a slab representing a solid region and its boundary simultaneously.