Library

Description: Abstract: Objective: To present a novel method for automated segmentation of knee menisci from MRIs. To evaluate quantitative meniscal biomarkers for osteoarthritis (OA) estimated thereof. Method: A segmentation method employing convolutional neural networks in combination with statistical shape models was developed. Accuracy was evaluated on 88 manual segmentations. Meniscal volume, tibial coverage, and meniscal extrusion were computed and tested for differences between groups of OA, joint space narrowing (JSN), and WOMAC pain. Correlation between computed meniscal extrusion and MOAKS experts' readings was evaluated for 600 subjects. Suitability of biomarkers for predicting incident radiographic OA from baseline to 24 months was tested on a group of 552 patients (184 incident OA, 386 controls) by performing conditional logistic regression. Results: Segmentation accuracy measured as Dice Similarity Coefficient was 83.8% for medial menisci (MM) and 88.9% for lateral menisci (LM) at baseline, and 83.1% and 88.3% at 12-month follow-up. Medial tibial coverage was significantly lower for arthritic cases compared to non-arthritic ones. Medial meniscal extrusion was significantly higher for arthritic knees. A moderate correlation between automatically computed medial meniscal extrusion and experts' readings was found (ρ=0.44). Mean medial meniscal extrusion was significantly greater for incident OA cases compared to controls (1.16±0.93 mm vs. 0.83±0.92 mm; p〈0.05). Conclusion: Especially for medial menisci an excellent segmentation accuracy was achieved. Our meniscal biomarkers were validated by comparison to experts' readings as well as analysis of differences w.r.t groups of OA, JSN, and WOMAC pain. It was confirmed that medial meniscal extrusion is a predictor for incident OA.

Description: Precise voxel trajectory estimation in 4D CT images is a prerequisite for reliable dose accumulation during 4D treatment planning. 4D CT image data is, however, often affected by motion artifacts and applying standard pairwise registration to such data sets bears the risk of aligning anatomical structures to artifacts – with physiologically unrealistic trajectories being the consequence. In this work, the potential of a novel non-linear hybrid intensity- and feature-based groupwise registration method for robust motion field estimation in artifact-affected 4D CT image data is investigated. The overall registration performance is evaluated on the DIR-lab datasets; Its robustness if applied to artifact-affected data sets is analyzed using clinically acquired data sets with and without artifacts. The proposed registration approach achieves an accuracy comparable to the state-of-the-art (subvoxel accuracy), but smoother voxel trajectories compared to pairwise registration. Even more important: it maintained accuracy and trajectory smoothness in the presence of image artifacts – in contrast to standard pairwise registration, which yields higher landmark-based registration errors and a loss of trajectory smoothness when applied to artifact-affected data sets.

Description: In der Strahlentherapie von Lungentumoren kann mittels Dosisakkumulation der Einfluss von Atembewegungen auf statisch geplante Dosisverteilungen abgeschätzt werden. Grundlage sind 4D-CT-Daten des Patienten, aus denen mittels nicht-linearer Bildregistrierung eine Sequenz von Bewegungsfeldern berechnet wird. Typischerweise werden Methoden der paarweisen Bildregistrierung eingesetzt, d.h. konsekutiv zwei Atemphasen aufeinander registriert. Hierbei erfolgt i.d.R. eine physiologisch nicht plausible Anpassung der Felder an CT-Bewegungsartefakte. Gruppenweise Registrierungsansätze berücksichtigen hingegen gleichzeitig sämtliche Bilddaten des 4D-CT-Scans und ermöglichen die Integration von zeitlichen Konsistenzbetrachtungen. In diesem Beitrag wird der potentielle Vorteil der gruppen- im Vergleich zur paarweisen Registrierung in artefaktbehafteten 4D-CT-Daten untersucht.

Description: Das Ziel der Strahlentherapie ist, eine möglichst hohe Dosis in den Tumor zu applizieren und zeitgleich die Strahlenexposition des Normalgewebes zu minimieren. Insbesondere bei thorakalen und abdominalen Tumoren treten aufgrund der Atmung während der Bestrahlung große, komplexe und patientenspezifisch unterschiedliche Bewegungen der Gewebe auf. Um den Einfluss dieser Bewegung auf die i.d.R. statisch geplante Dosisverteilung abzuschätzen, können unter Verwendung der nicht-linearen Bildregistrierung anhand von 3D-CT-Aufnahmen eines Atmungszyklus - also 4D-CT-Daten - zunächst die Bewegungsfelder für die strahlentherapeutisch relevanten Strukturen, beispielsweise für die Lunge, berechnet werden. Diese Informationen bilden die Grundlage für sogenannte 4D-Dosisberechnungs- oder Dosisakkumulationsverfahren. Deren Genauigkeit hängt aber wesentlich von der Genauigkeit der Bewegungsfeldschätzung ab. Klassisch erfolgt die Berechnung der Bewegungsfelder mittels paarweiser Bildregistrierung, womit für die Berechnung des Bewegungsfeldes zwischen zwei Bildern im Allgemeinen eine sehr hohe Genauigkeit erreicht wird. Auch für CT-Bilder, die Bewegungsartefakte, wie beispielsweise doppelte oder unvollständige Strukturen, enthalten, wird unter Verwendung der paarweisen Bildregistrierung im Kontext der Registrierung eine exakte Abbildung der anatomischen Strukturen zwischen den beiden Bildern erreicht. Dabei erfolgt aber eine physiologisch unplausible Anpassung der Felder an die Artefakte. Bei Verwendung der paarweisen Bildregistrierung müssen weiterhin für einen Atemzyklus die Voxel-Trajektorien aus Bewegungsfeldern zwischen mehreren dreidimensionalen Bildern zusammengesetzt werden. Durch Bewegungsartefakte entsprechen diese Trajektorien dann teilweise keiner natürlichen Bewegung der anatomischen Strukturen. Diese Ungenauigkeit stellt in der klinischen Anwendung ein Problem dar; dies gilt umso mehr, wenn Bewegungsartefakte im Bereich eines Tumors vorliegen. Im Gegensatz zu der paarweisen Registrierung kann mit der gruppenweisen Registrierung das Problem der durch Bewegungsartefakte hervorgerufenen ungenauen Abbildung der physiologischen Gegebenheiten dadurch reduziert werden, dass im Registrierungsprozess Bildinformationen aller Bilder, also in diesem Kontext der CT-Daten zu unterschiedlichen Atemphasen, gleichzeitig genutzt werden. Es kann bereits im Registrierungsprozess eine zeitliche Glattheit der Voxel-Trajektorien gefordert werden. In dieser Arbeit wird eine Methode zur B-Spline-basierten zeitlich regularisierten gruppenweisen Registrierung entwickelt. Die Genauigkeit der entwickelten Methode wird für frei zugängliche klinische Datensätze landmarkenbasiert evaluiert. Dabei wird mit dem Target Registration Error (TRE) die durchschnittliche dreidimensionale euklidische Distanz zwischen den korrespondierenden Landmarken nach Transformation der Landmarken bezeichnet. Eine Genauigkeit in der Größenordnung von aktuellen paarweisen Registrierungen verdeutlicht die Qualität des vorgestellten Registrierungs-Algorithmus. Anschließend werden die Vorteile der gruppenweisen Registrierung durch Experimente an einem Lungenphantom und an manipulierten, artefaktbehafteten klinischen 4D-CT-Bilddaten demonstriert. Dabei werden unter Verwendung der gruppenweisen Registrierung im Vergleich zu der paarweisen Registrierung glattere Trajektorien berechnet, die der realen Bewegung der anatomischen Strukturen stärker entsprechen. Für die Patientendaten wird außerdem anhand von automatisch detektierten Landmarken der TRE ausgewertet. Der TRE verschlechterte sich für die paarweise Bildregistrierung unter Vorliegen von Bewegungsartefakten von durchschnittlich 1,30 mm auf 3,94 mm. Auch hier zeigte sich für die gruppenweise Registrierung die Robustheit gegenüber Bewegungsartefakten und der TRE verschlechterte sich nur geringfügig von 1,45 mm auf 1,71 mm.

Description: We present a method for the automated segmentation of knee bones and cartilage from magnetic resonance imaging that combines a priori knowledge of anatomical shape with Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). The proposed approach incorporates 3D Statistical Shape Models (SSMs) as well as 2D and 3D CNNs to achieve a robust and accurate segmentation of even highly pathological knee structures. The shape models and neural networks employed are trained using data of the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) and the MICCAI grand challenge "Segmentation of Knee Images 2010" (SKI10), respectively. We evaluate our method on 40 validation and 50 submission datasets of the SKI10 challenge. For the first time, an accuracy equivalent to the inter-observer variability of human readers has been achieved in this challenge. Moreover, the quality of the proposed method is thoroughly assessed using various measures for data from the OAI, i.e. 507 manual segmentations of bone and cartilage, and 88 additional manual segmentations of cartilage. Our method yields sub-voxel accuracy for both OAI datasets. We made the 507 manual segmentations as well as our experimental setup publicly available to further aid research in the field of medical image segmentation. In conclusion, combining statistical anatomical knowledge via SSMs with the localized classification via CNNs results in a state-of-the-art segmentation method for knee bones and cartilage from MRI data.

Description: We present a method for the automated segmentation of knee bones and cartilage from magnetic resonance imaging that combines a priori knowledge of anatomical shape with Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). The proposed approach incorporates 3D Statistical Shape Models (SSMs) as well as 2D and 3D CNNs to achieve a robust and accurate segmentation of even highly pathological knee structures. The shape models and neural networks employed are trained using data of the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) and the MICCAI grand challenge "Segmentation of Knee Images 2010" (SKI10), respectively. We evaluate our method on 40 validation and 50 submission datasets of the SKI10 challenge. For the first time, an accuracy equivalent to the inter-observer variability of human readers has been achieved in this challenge. Moreover, the quality of the proposed method is thoroughly assessed using various measures for data from the OAI, i.e. 507 manual segmentations of bone and cartilage, and 88 additional manual segmentations of cartilage. Our method yields sub-voxel accuracy for both OAI datasets. We made the 507 manual segmentations as well as our experimental setup publicly available to further aid research in the field of medical image segmentation. In conclusion, combining statistical anatomical knowledge via SSMs with the localized classification via CNNs results in a state-of-the-art segmentation method for knee bones and cartilage from MRI data.

Description: Abstract: Objective: To present a novel method for automated segmentation of knee menisci from MRIs. To evaluate quantitative meniscal biomarkers for osteoarthritis (OA) estimated thereof. Method: A segmentation method employing convolutional neural networks in combination with statistical shape models was developed. Accuracy was evaluated on 88 manual segmentations. Meniscal volume, tibial coverage, and meniscal extrusion were computed and tested for differences between groups of OA, joint space narrowing (JSN), and WOMAC pain. Correlation between computed meniscal extrusion and MOAKS experts' readings was evaluated for 600 subjects. Suitability of biomarkers for predicting incident radiographic OA from baseline to 24 months was tested on a group of 552 patients (184 incident OA, 386 controls) by performing conditional logistic regression. Results: Segmentation accuracy measured as Dice Similarity Coefficient was 83.8% for medial menisci (MM) and 88.9% for lateral menisci (LM) at baseline, and 83.1% and 88.3% at 12-month follow-up. Medial tibial coverage was significantly lower for arthritic cases compared to non-arthritic ones. Medial meniscal extrusion was significantly higher for arthritic knees. A moderate correlation between automatically computed medial meniscal extrusion and experts' readings was found (ρ=0.44). Mean medial meniscal extrusion was significantly greater for incident OA cases compared to controls (1.16±0.93 mm vs. 0.83±0.92 mm; p〈0.05). Conclusion: Especially for medial menisci an excellent segmentation accuracy was achieved. Our meniscal biomarkers were validated by comparison to experts' readings as well as analysis of differences w.r.t groups of OA, JSN, and WOMAC pain. It was confirmed that medial meniscal extrusion is a predictor for incident OA.

Description: The reconstruction of an object’s shape or surface from a set of 3D points plays an important role in medical image analysis, e.g. in anatomy reconstruction from tomographic measurements or in the process of aligning intra-operative navigation and preoperative planning data. In such scenarios, one usually has to deal with sparse data, which significantly aggravates the problem of reconstruction. However, medical applications often provide contextual information about the 3D point data that allow to incorporate prior knowledge about the shape that is to be reconstructed. To this end, we propose the use of a statistical shape model (SSM) as a prior for surface reconstruction. The SSM is represented by a point distribution model (PDM), which is associated with a surface mesh. Using the shape distribution that is modelled by the PDM, we formulate the problem of surface reconstruction from a probabilistic perspective based on a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM). In order to do so, the given points are interpreted as samples of the GMM. By using mixture components with anisotropic covariances that are “oriented” according to the surface normals at the PDM points, a surface-based fitting is accomplished. Estimating the parameters of the GMM in a maximum a posteriori manner yields the reconstruction of the surface from the given data points. We compare our method to the extensively used Iterative Closest Points method on several different anatomical datasets/SSMs (brain, femur, tibia, hip, liver) and demonstrate superior accuracy and robustness on sparse data.

Description: We present a method for the automated segmentation of knee bones and cartilage from magnetic resonance imaging, that combines a priori knowledge of anatomical shape with Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). The proposed approach incorporates 3D Statistical Shape Models (SSMs) as well as 2D and 3D CNNs to achieve a robust and accurate segmentation of even highly pathological knee structures. The method is evaluated on data of the MICCAI grand challenge "Segmentation of Knee Images 2010". For the first time an accuracy equivalent to the inter-observer variability of human readers has been achieved in this challenge. Moreover, the quality of the proposed method is thoroughly assessed using various measures for 507 manual segmentations of bone and cartilage, and 88 additional manual segmentations of cartilage. Our method yields sub-voxel accuracy. In conclusion, combining of anatomical knowledge using SSMs with localized classification via CNNs results in a state-of-the-art segmentation method.

Description: Abstract: Objective: To present a novel method for automated segmentation of knee menisci from MRIs. To evaluate quantitative meniscal biomarkers for osteoarthritis (OA) estimated thereof. Method: A segmentation method employing convolutional neural networks in combination with statistical shape models was developed. Accuracy was evaluated on 88 manual segmentations. Meniscal volume, tibial coverage, and meniscal extrusion were computed and tested for differences between groups of OA, joint space narrowing (JSN), and WOMAC pain. Correlation between computed meniscal extrusion and MOAKS experts' readings was evaluated for 600 subjects. Suitability of biomarkers for predicting incident radiographic OA from baseline to 24 months was tested on a group of 552 patients (184 incident OA, 386 controls) by performing conditional logistic regression. Results: Segmentation accuracy measured as Dice Similarity Coefficient was 83.8% for medial menisci (MM) and 88.9% for lateral menisci (LM) at baseline, and 83.1% and 88.3% at 12-month follow-up. Medial tibial coverage was significantly lower for arthritic cases compared to non-arthritic ones. Medial meniscal extrusion was significantly higher for arthritic knees. A moderate correlation between automatically computed medial meniscal extrusion and experts' readings was found (ρ=0.44). Mean medial meniscal extrusion was significantly greater for incident OA cases compared to controls (1.16±0.93 mm vs. 0.83±0.92 mm; p〈0.05). Conclusion: Especially for medial menisci an excellent segmentation accuracy was achieved. Our meniscal biomarkers were validated by comparison to experts' readings as well as analysis of differences w.r.t groups of OA, JSN, and WOMAC pain. It was confirmed that medial meniscal extrusion is a predictor for incident OA.