19.10.2011 Fraunhofer MEVIS researchers receive LOLA11 award

Bianca Lassen, Jan-Martin Kuhnigk, Michael Schmidt, Stefan Krass, and Heinz-Otto Peitgen from Fraunhofer MEVIS received the first prize of the challenge within the framework of the MICCAI 2011 in Toronto, the 14th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention.

In their work they presented lung and lung lobe segmentation methods developed at Fraunhofer MEVIS: one method for segmenting the lungs and three methods to segment pulmonary lobes from thoracic CT images and their application to the LOLA11 challenge data. The lung segmentation procedure is fully automated and uses a sequence of morphological operations to refine an initial threshold-based segmentation of the pulmonary airspaces. Based on its results, lobe segmentation is performed.

The three presented lobe segmentation methods differ substantially in grade of automation.

The first lobe segmentation method is a fully automatic segmentation algorithm that combines information from lobar fissures, blood vessels and the airway tree by means of a watershed trans- formation.

The second presented method describes an efficient interactive correction mechanism for existing lobe segmentations. The user can iteratively modify a lobar boundary by drawing its correct course onto regions of insufficient segmentation, getting instant feedback of the results of his actions.

The third presented algorithm is an interactive method related to the second one, but it allows for segmentation from scratch based on a lung mask only.

Links:

LOLA11

MICCAI