Local Speed Functions in Level Set Based Vessel Segmentation

A new segmentation scheme is proposed for 3D vascular tree delineation in CTA data sets, which has two essential features. First, the segmentation is carried out locally in a small volume of interest (VOI), second, a global topology estimation is made to initialize a new VOI. The use of local VOI allows that parameter settings for the level set speed function can be optimally set depending on the local image content, which is advantageous especially in vascular tree segmentation where contrast may change significantly, especially in the distal part of the vascular. Moreover, a local approach is significantly faster. A comparison study on five CTA data sets showed that our method has the potential to segment larger part of the vessel tree compared to a similar global level set based segmentation, and in substantially less computation time.