Fast and robust method to compute colon centerline in CT colonography

Hans Frimmel; Janne J. Naeppi; Hiroyuki Yoshida

doi:10.1117/12.480666

2 May 2003 Fast and robust method to compute colon centerline in CT colonography

Hans Frimmel, Janne J. Naeppi, Hiroyuki Yoshida

Proceedings Volume 5031, Medical Imaging 2003: Physiology and Function: Methods, Systems, and Applications; (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.480666
Event: Medical Imaging 2003, 2003, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

We developed a method for generating the centerline of a colon in CT Colonography that is computationally fast, and robust to collapsed regions. Patients underwent CT Colonography after standard pre-colonoscopy cleansing. The colonic lumen was segmented using an existing anatomy-based approach, and a distance map of the colonic lumen was computed using a distance transform. The centerline was computed as follows: Local maxima representative for the centerline were sparsely extracted from the distance map. Iteratively, each pair of maxima satisfying a set of connection criteria were connected, creating a graph-like structure containing a main centerline with additional branches. Branches were later removed and the resulting centerline was stored. Centerlines of the colon were computed, and also manually and independently drawn by two radiologists, for 33 CT Colonographic data sets. The data sets were chosen to give a wide spectrum of colons, ranging from cases with good segmentation and extension to cases with collapsed regions and numerous extra-colonic components such as small bowel. On average, 94% of the human-generated centerlines were correctly identified by the computer-generated centerlines. The average displacement between the human- and computer-generated centerlines was 4.0 mm. Average centerline computation time was less than 4 seconds.

Citation Download Citation

Hans Frimmel, Janne J. Naeppi, and Hiroyuki Yoshida "Fast and robust method to compute colon centerline in CT colonography", Proc. SPIE 5031, Medical Imaging 2003: Physiology and Function: Methods, Systems, and Applications, (2 May 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.480666

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