2 a Knowledge Based Processing

This paper discusses the methods used to model the structure of x-ray images of the human body and the individual organs within the body. A generic model of a region is built up from x-ray images to aid in automatic segmentation. By using the ribs from a chest x-ray image as an example, it will be shown how models of the diierent organs can be generated. The generic model of the chest region is built up by using a priori knowledge of the physical structure of the human body. The boundaries of the diierent organs can be found by using this information in an intelligent manner. The models of the individual organs are built up by using knowledge of the structure of the organs as well as other information contained within each image. Each image is unique and therefore information from the region surrounding the organs in the image has to be taken into account when adapting the generic model to individual images. Results showing the application of these techniques to x-ray images of the chest region, the labelling of individual organs and the generation of models of the ribs will be presented.