Semi-automatic liver volume segmentation in computed tomography images

Liver volume is a significant parameter in surgery for tumor extraction, transplants, and regeneration treatments. Generally, the volume estimation is obtained from manual segmentations performed by specialists, resulting in a tedious process with low reproducibility. In this work a semi-automatic method for the liver volume segmentation in CT images is presented. The method consist in manually superimpose a triangular surface on the images, and use a movement equation associated to each vertex to deform the surface and delimit the liver boundaries. Surface dynamics depend on intensity and gradient information, and neighboring relationships between vertices, until a fixed number of iterations is reached. Comparison between the obtained results and reference segmentations in 20 CT scans, show the surface adaptability to the shape and the diffuse boundaries of the liver, two of the principal segmentation problems.