A New 3D Method to Segment the Lumbar Vertebral Bodies and to Determine Bone Mineral Density and Geometry
This work aims to improve fracture prediction and patient monitoring for osteoporosis patients, but it is incremental as it combines existing methods like deformable models and volume growing.
The paper tackled the problem of segmenting lumbar vertebral bodies in CT scans to measure bone mineral density and geometry, achieving intra-operator precision better than 1% for BMD and 1.8% for volume.
In this paper we present a new 3D segmentation approach for the vertebrae of the lower thoracic and the lumbar spine in spiral computed tomography datasets. We implemented a multi-step procedure. Its main components are deformable models, volume growing, and morphological operations. The performance analysis that included an evaluation of accuracy using the European Spine Phantom, and of intra-operator precision using clinical CT datasets from 10 patients highlight the potential for clinical use. The intra-operator precision of the segmentation procedure was better than 1% for Bone Mineral Density (BMD) and better than 1.8% for volume. The long-term goal of this work is to enable better fracture prediction and improved patient monitoring in the field of osteoporosis. A true 3D segmentation also enables an accurate measurement of geometrical parameters that can augment the classical measurement of BMD.