Counter-Driven Regression for Label Inference in Atlas-Based Segmentation

We present a novel method for inferring tissue labels in atlas-based image segmentation using Gaussian process regression. Atlas-based segmentation results in probabilistic label maps that serve as input to our method. We introduce a contour-driven prior distribution over label maps to incorporate i...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wachinger, Christian, Sharp, Gregory C., Golland, Polina
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Springer-Verlag 2014
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/86193
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3652-1874
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2516-731X
Description
Summary:We present a novel method for inferring tissue labels in atlas-based image segmentation using Gaussian process regression. Atlas-based segmentation results in probabilistic label maps that serve as input to our method. We introduce a contour-driven prior distribution over label maps to incorporate image features of the input scan into the label inference problem. The mean function of the Gaussian process posterior distribution yields the MAP estimate of the label map and is used in the subsequent voting. We demonstrate improved segmentation accuracy when our approach is combined with two different patch-based segmentation techniques. We focus on the segmentation of parotid glands in CT scans of patients with head and neck cancer, which is important for radiation therapy planning.