Deformable Templates for the Localization of Anatomical Structures in Radiologic Images

This paper describes a method for non-rigid registration of a model template with the corresponding anatomic structure in a radiologic image. The model template is a graph consisting of labeled nodes and edges. Each node is labeled by a feature vector that characterizes the sought structures in its vicinity. The edges connect the nodes in accordance with anatomical topology. The features which describe possible node positions are computed by ltering the image with a set of Gabor lters and comparing the lter responses with those from the model. The nal node positions are determined by minimizing a deformation energy term associated with the template. We show results for digitized lm orthopantomograms of the jaw which indicate good performance at modest computational e ort for such artifact-rich images. The results are used for localization of bone lesions relative to anatomic structures.