Semi-automated method for brain hematoma and edema quantification using computed tomography

In this paper, a semi-automated method for brain hematoma and edema segmentation, and volume measurement using computed tomography imaging is presented. This method combines a region growing approach to segment the hematoma and a level set segmentation technique to segment the edema. The main novelty of this method is the strategy applied to define the propagation function required by the level set approach. To evaluate the method, 18 patients with brain hematoma and edema of different size, shape and location were selected. The obtained results demonstrate that the proposed approach provides objective and reproducible segmentations that are similar to the manually obtained results. Moreover, the processing time of the proposed method is about 4 min compared to the 10 min required for manual segmentation.