AN AUTOMATIC SEGMENTATION OF LIVER COLUME THAT CONTAINED DISCONNECTED REGION WITH DYNAMIC LOCAL NEIGHBOURHOOD REGION SIZES

Abstract

Segmentation of liver images containing disconnected regions has always been an overlooked problem. Previous works on liver segmentation either ignore this problem or use manual initialization when facing these disconnected regions. Therefore, in this paper we propose a liver level set (LLS) algorithm which is able to segment disconnected regions automatically. The LLS algorithm is based on level set framework together with hybrid energy minimization as the stopping function. By using the LLS algorithm in a looping manner, we allow the current liver boundary to inherit the topological changes from previous images in a 2.5D environment. We also conduct an experiment to obtain an average factor for dynamic localization region sizes based on liver anatomy to improve the segmentation accuracy. These dynamic localization region sizes ensure a more accurate segmentation when compared with manual segmentation. Our experiment gives a respective segmentation result with dice similarity coefficient (DSC) percentage of 87.5%. Plus, our LLS algorithm is able to segment all connected and disconnected liver region automatically and accurately.