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Detection of point landmarks in 3D medical images via phase congruency model

Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society volume 17, pages 117–132 (2011)Cite this article

Abstract

This paper presents a novel technique for detection of point landmarks in volumetric medical images based on a three-dimensional (3D) Phase Congruency (PC) model. A bank of 3D log-Gabor filters is specially designed in the frequency domain and used to compute 3D energy maps, which are further combined to form the phase congruency measure. The PC measure is invariant to intensity variations and contrast resolution and provides a good indication of feature significance in an image. To detect significant 3D point landmarks, eigen-analysis of a 3×3 matrix of second-order PC moments, computed for each point in the image, is performed followed by local maxima detection. Two different application scenarios in radiation therapy planning of the head and neck anatomy are used to illustrate the feasibility and usefulness of the proposed method.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Sciences, Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), Rod. Washington Luís, Km 235, Caixa Postal 676, 13565-905, São Carlos, SP, Brazil

    Ricardo J. Ferrari

  2. Princess Margaret Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Stéphane Allaire, Andrew Hope, John Kim & David Jaffray

  3. Philips Research North America, Toronto, Markham, ON, Canada

    Vladimir Pekar

Authors
  1. Ricardo J. Ferrari
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  2. Stéphane Allaire
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  3. Andrew Hope
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  4. John Kim
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  5. David Jaffray
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  6. Vladimir Pekar
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ricardo J. Ferrari.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Ferrari, R.J., Allaire, S., Hope, A. et al. Detection of point landmarks in 3D medical images via phase congruency model. J Braz Comput Soc 17, 117–132 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13173-011-0032-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13173-011-0032-8

Keywords

  • Point landmarks
  • 3D hase congruency
  • 3D log-Gabor filters
  • Wavelets
  • Nonrigid registration
  • Radiation therapy