Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics
Volume 33, Issue 8 , Pages 602-607, December 2009

An improved graph cut segmentation method for cervical lymph nodes on sonograms and its relationship with node's shape assessment

  • Junhua Zhang

      Affiliations

    • Department of Electronic Engineering, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China
    • Tel.: +86 871 5031301; fax: +86 871 5031301.
    • ,
  • Yuanyuan Wang

      Affiliations

    • Department of Electronic Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Tel.: +86 21 65643526; fax: +86 21 65643526.
    • ,
  • Xinling Shi

      Affiliations

    • Department of Electronic Engineering, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China
    • Tel.: +86 871 5031301; fax: +86 871 5031301.

Received 25 October 2008; received in revised form 5 March 2009; accepted 6 June 2009.

Abstract 

A modified graph cut was proposed under the elliptical shape constraint to segment cervical lymph nodes on sonograms, and its effect on the measurement of short axis to long axis ratio (S/L) was investigated by using the relative ultimate measurement accuracy (RUMA). Under the same user inputs, the proposed algorithm successfully segmented all 60 sonograms tested, while the traditional graph cut failed. The mean RUMA resulted from the developed method was comparable to that resulted from the manual segmentation. Results indicated that utilizing the elliptical shape prior could appreciably improve the graph cut for nodes segmentation, and the proposed method satisfied the accuracy requirement of S/L measurement.

Keywords: Graph cut, Cervical lymph node, Sonogram, Elliptical shape prior, Short axis to long axis ratio (S/L)

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PII: S0895-6111(09)00080-9

doi:10.1016/j.compmedimag.2009.06.002

Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics
Volume 33, Issue 8 , Pages 602-607, December 2009

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