About cookies on this site Our websites require some cookies to function properly (required). In addition, other cookies may be used with your consent to analyze site usage, improve the user experience and for advertising. For more information, please review your options. By visiting our website, you agree to our processing of information as described in IBM’sprivacy statement. To provide a smooth navigation, your cookie preferences will be shared across the IBM web domains listed here.
Paper
An object-oriented system for 3D medical image analysis
Abstract
As part of a European Commission-funded research project on medical image analysis, we have developed a system aimed at solving a real clinical problem: the outlining of the target volume and organs at risk for three-dimensional conformal radiation treatment planning. The clinical requirement is to make this process less tedious and time-consuming. We show how object-oriented design techniques can be used to good effect in a collaborative project such as this, so that image segmentation and other algorithms from a number of different partners in the consortium can be integrated into one system, for comparative evaluation by the clinical partners. We describe in some detail two of these algorithms, one a straightforward region and volume grower, in which particular attention has been paid to adapting the user interface to suit clinical needs, and the other an interactive tool using b-spline surface patches for direct three-dimensional segmentation. We report on the clinical feedback we have received, which indicates that the most technically advanced algorithms are not necessarily the most useful from a clinician's point of view.