Automatic lumbar vertebra segmentation from clinical CT for wedge compression fracture diagnosis

Abstract

Lumbar vertebral fractures vary greatly in types and causes and usually result from severe trauma or pathological conditions such as osteoporosis. Lumbar wedge compression fractures are amongst the most common ones where the vertebra is severely compressed forming a wedge shape and causing pain and pressure on the nerve roots and the spine. Since vertebral segmentation is the first step in any automated diagnosis task, we present a fully automated method for robustly localizing and segmenting the vertebrae for preparation of vertebral fracture diagnosis. Our segmentation method consists of five main steps towards the CAD(Computer-Aided Diagnosis) system: 1) Localization of the intervertebral discs. 2) Localization of the vertebral skeleton. 3) Segmentation of the individual vertebra. 4) Detection of the vertebrae center line and 5) Detection of the vertebrae major boundary points. Our segmentation results are promising with an average error of 1.5mm (modified Hausdorff distance metric) on 50 clinical CT cases i.e. a total of 250 lumbar vertebrae. We also present promising preliminary results for automatic wedge compression fracture diagnosis on 15 cases, 7 of which have one or more vertebral compression fracture, and obtain an accuracy of 97.33%.

Vertebral Body Compression Fractures and Bone Density: Automated Detection and Classification on CT Images

“…When compared with the method of Hsieh et al (33), vertebral body height loss is measured directly with 3D segmentation and partitioning of the vertebrae rather than indirectly by measuring spinal curvature. We have incorporated the left and right aspects for 3D lateralization, extending beyond anterior, middle, and posterior sagittal midline vertebral body height loss as in Ghosh et al (34) and Baum et al (25), and compared with Baum et al (25), we include the entire thoracic spine, not just the T5-T12 vertebrae. Additionally, we measured bone density in this study.…”

Automated Detection, Localization, and Classification of Traumatic Vertebral Body Fractures in the Thoracic and Lumbar Spine at CT

“…Additionally, research has been conducted for computerized assessment of compression fractures through the detection of vertebral body height loss on midline sagittal sections of lumbar computed tomographic (CT) images and on three-dimensional volumetric renderings (22,23). However, simple height measurement is not sufficient for fracture categorization in a number of spine trauma injury classification systems in clinical use.…”

Quantitative vertebral compression fracture evaluation using a height compass

“…Currently there is no tool to quantitatively assess the extent and 3D pattern of compression fracture. Ghosh 's work [12] was the only one targeting the computing technique to diagnose compression fracture. They presented a method to segment the vertebra for wedge compression fracture diagnosis on the center sagittal slice of a vertebral body.…”