A framework for automatic construction of 3D PDM from segmented volumetric neuroradiological data sets.

3D point distribution model (PDM) of subcortical structures can be applied in medical image analysis by providing priori-knowledge. However, accurate shape representation and point correspondence are still challenging for building 3D PDM. This paper presents a novel framework for the automated construction of 3D PDMs from a set of segmented volumetric images. First, a template shape is generated according to the spatial overlap. Then the corresponding landmarks among shapes are automatically identified by a novel hierarchical global-to-local approach, which combines iterative closest point based global registration and active surface model based local deformation to transform the template shape to all other shapes. Finally, a 3D PDM is constructed. Experiment results on four subcortical structures show that the proposed method is able to construct 3D PDMs with a high quality in compactness, generalization and specificity, and more efficient and effective than the state-of-art methods such as MDL and SPHARM.