Regional appearance modeling for deformable model-based image segmentation

This thesis presents a novel appearance prior for model-based image segmentation. This appearance prior, denoted as Multimodal Prior Appearance Model (MPAM), is built upon an EM clustering of intensity pro les with model order selection to automatically select the number of pro le classes. Unlike classical PCAbased approaches, the clustering is considered as regional because intensity pro les are classi ed for each mesh and not for each vertex. First, we explain how to build a MPAM from a training set of meshes and images. The clustering of intensity pro les and the determination of the number of appearance regions by a novel model order selection criterion are explained. A spatial regularization approach to spatially smooth the clustering of pro les is presented and the projection of the appearance information from each dataset on a reference mesh is described. Second, we present a boosted clustering based on spectral clustering, which optimizes the clustering of pro les for segmentation purposes. The representation of the similarity between data points in the spectral space is explained. Comparative results on liver pro les from CT images show that our approach outperforms PCAbased appearance models. Finally, we present methods for the analysis of lower limb structures from MR images. In a rst part, our technique to create subject-speci c models for kinematic simulations of lower limbs is described. In a second part, the performance of statistical models is compared in the context of lower limb bones segmentation when only a small number of datasets is available for training.