Model-based segmentation using graph representations.

A generic supervised segmentation approach is presented. The object is described as a graph where the vertices correspond to landmarks points and the edges define the landmark relations. Instead of building one single global shape model, a priori shape information is represented as a concatenation of local shape models that consider only local dependencies between connected landmarks. The objective function is obtained from a maximum a posteriori criterion and is build up of localized energies of both shape and landmark intensity information. The optimization problem is discretized by searching candidates for each landmark using individual landmark intensity descriptors. The discrete optimization problem is then solved using mean field annealing or dynamic programming techniques. The algorithm is validated for hand bone segmentation from RX datasets and for 3D liver segmentation from contrast enhanced CT images.