Department of Electrical Engineering, National United University, Miao-Li, 36063, Taiwan.
Department of Medical Imaging, National Taiwan University Hospital and National Taiwan University College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10002, Taiwan.
Sci Rep. 2018 Apr 18;8(1):6159. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-22941-2.
Dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) is used to diagnose breast disease. Obtaining anatomical information from DCE-MRI requires the skin be manually removed so that blood vessels and tumors can be clearly observed by physicians and radiologists; this requires considerable manpower and time. We develop an automated skin segmentation algorithm where the surface skin is removed rapidly and correctly. The rough skin area is segmented by the active contour model, and analyzed in segments according to the continuity of the skin thickness for accuracy. Blood vessels and mammary glands are retained, which remedies the defect of removing some blood vessels in active contours. After three-dimensional imaging, the DCE-MRIs without the skin can be used to see internal anatomical information for clinical applications. The research showed the Dice's coefficients of the 3D reconstructed images using the proposed algorithm and the active contour model for removing skins are 93.2% and 61.4%, respectively. The time performance of segmenting skins automatically is about 165 times faster than manually. The texture information of the tumors position with/without the skin is compared by the paired t-test yielded all p < 0.05, which suggested the proposed algorithm may enhance observability of tumors at the significance level of 0.05.
动态对比增强磁共振成像（DCE-MRI）用于诊断乳房疾病。从 DCE-MRI 中获取解剖信息需要手动去除皮肤，以便医生和放射科医生能够清晰地观察血管和肿瘤；这需要相当大的人力和时间。我们开发了一种自动皮肤分割算法，能够快速准确地去除表面皮肤。通过主动轮廓模型对粗糙皮肤区域进行分割，并根据皮肤厚度的连续性进行分段分析，以提高准确性。保留血管和乳腺，解决了主动轮廓中去除部分血管的缺陷。三维成像后，可使用无皮肤的 DCE-MRI 观察内部解剖信息，用于临床应用。研究表明，使用所提出的算法和主动轮廓模型去除皮肤的三维重建图像的 Dice 系数分别为 93.2%和 61.4%。自动分割皮肤的时间性能比手动分割快约 165 倍。通过配对 t 检验比较了有/无皮肤时肿瘤位置的纹理信息，结果均为 p<0.05，表明该算法可能在 0.05 的显著性水平上增强肿瘤的可观测性。
