A knowledge-based approach to volumetric medical image segmentation

We propose in this paper an automatic segmentation of 3D image data based on a novel technique using adaptive K-mean clustering and knowledge-based morphological operations. The proposed adaptive K-mean clustering algorithm is capable of segmenting the regions of smoothly varying intensity distributions. Spatial constraints are incorporated in the clustering algorithm through the modeling of the regions by Gibbs random fields. Knowledge-based morphological operations are then applied to the segmented regions to identify the desired regions according to a priori anatomical knowledge of the region-of-interest. This proposed technique has been successfully applied to a sequence of cardiac CT volumetric images to generate the volumes of left ventricle chambers at 16 consecutive temporal frames. Our final automatic segmentation results compare favorably with the results obtained using manual outlining. Extensions of this approach to other applications can be readily made when a priori knowledge of the given object is available.