Title
Statistical analysis of manual segmentations of structures in medical images
Abstract
The problem of extracting anatomical structures from medical images is both very important and difficult. In this paper we are motivated by a new paradigm in medical image segmentation, termed Citizen Science, which involves a volunteer effort from multiple, possibly non-expert, human participants. These contributors observe 2D images and generate their estimates of anatomical boundaries in the form of planar closed curves. The challenge, of course, is to combine these different estimates in a coherent fashion and to develop an overall estimate of the underlying structure. Treating these curves as random samples, we use statistical shape theory to generate joint inferences and analyze this data generated by the citizen scientists. The specific goals in this analysis are: (1) to find a robust estimate of the representative curve that provides an overall segmentation, (2) to quantify the level of agreement between segmentations, both globally (full contours) and locally (parts of contours), and (3) to automatically detect outliers and help reduce their influence in the estimation. We demonstrate these ideas using a number of artificial examples and real applications in medical imaging, and summarize their potential use in future scenarios.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1016/j.cviu.2012.11.014
Computer Vision and Image Understanding
Keywords
Field
DocType
robust estimate,anatomical structure,medical image segmentation,statistical analysis,potential use,overall segmentation,anatomical boundary,medical imaging,manual segmentation,overall estimate,medical image,different estimate
Data mining,Scale-space segmentation,Computer science,Medical imaging,Image segmentation,Citizen science,Artificial intelligence,Shape theory,Computer vision,Segmentation,Outlier,Machine learning,Statistical analysis
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
117
9
1077-3142
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
5
0.58
15
Authors
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Kurtek, Sebastian124621.52
Jing-yong Su215610.93
Cindy M. Grimm376377.55
Michelle Vaughan450.58
Ross T. Sowell5296.46
Anuj Srivastava62853199.47