Max W.K. Law1, Calvin M.H. Lee1, Gladys G. Lo2, Jing Yuan1, Oilei Wong1, Abby Y. Ding1, and Siu Ki Yu1
1Medical Physics and Research Department, Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
This abstract proposes a new algorithm that automatically segments the skull from gradient echo based magnetic resonance images to facilitate MR-based radiotherapy planning. The proposed algorithm compared the neighboring voxel intensity to capture local structural information of bone. The structural information was incorporated in a topology template which encapsulated global topology prior of skulls to achieve automatic segmentation. With the sequence-independent structural and topology priors, this method is potentially applicable to other scanning sequences. The segmented skull will be helpful for clinical applications such as cephalometry and MR-based radiotherapy planning to reduce ionizing-radiation received by patients.
