Abstract #1122

Automated Segmentation of Lumbar Vertebral Bodies & Intervertebral Discs from MRI using Statistical Shape Models

Ales Neubert^1,2, Jurgen Fripp¹, Kaikai Shen¹, Craig Engstrom², Raphael Schwarz³, Lars Lauer³, Olivier Salvado¹, Stuart Crozier²

¹The Australian E-Health Research Centre, CSIRO, Brisbane, QLD, Australia; ²Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia; ³Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany

Automated segmentation of lumbar spine vertebrae and intervertebral discs is presented. Statistical shape models are built from a training database and applied to segment new cases by matching gray level profiles along normals to shape vertices. Automated initialisation is done by computing 3D spine curve and axial vertebral symmetries. Intensity profile along the spine curve is analysed to detect centres of vertebral bodies where the mean shape is placed. Approach was tested on a set of axial T1w and 3D Space T2w images with mean Dice scores of 0.85 (vertebrae) and 0.83 (discs).