Region-based clustering for lung segmentation in low-dose CT images

• Main Author: Monteiro, Fernando C.
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: eng
• Source: Repositórios Científicos de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP)
• Download full: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/2631
• topic: Lung segmentation; Graph clustering; Watershed transform; Pulmonary CT image

Lung segmentation in thoracic computed tomography scans is essential for the development of computer-aided diagnostic methods for identifying the lung diseases. Low-dose CT scans are increasingly utilized in lung studies, but segmenting them with traditional threshold segmentation algorithms often yields less than satisfying results. In this paper we present a hybrid framework to lung segmentation which joints region-based information based on watershed transform with clustering techniques. The proposed method eliminates the task of finding an optimal threshold and the over-segmentation produced by watershed. We have applied our approach on several pulmonary low-dose CT images and the results reveal the robustness and accuracy of this method.