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[Morphologic image processing operators: reduction of partial volume effects for improved 3D visualization of CT
J Beier1, R C Bittner, N Hosten
1Strahlen- und Poliklinik, Medizinische Fakultät, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Aim:
The quality of segmentation and three-dimensional reconstruction of anatomical structures in tomographic slices is often impaired by disturbances due to partial volume effects (PVE). The potential for artefact reduction by use of the morphological image processing operators (MO) erosion and dilation is investigated.
Design:
The CT examinations of 31 patients with pathological alterations in lung or brain were segmented using automatic region growing and the MO were applied in a different number of iterations. The processed regions were 3D-reconstructed (shaded surface display, MIP, volume rendering) and the occurrence of PVE-related artefacts using the signal-to-background ratio (SBR) prior to and after MO application was compared.
Results:
For all patients under review, the artefacts caused by PVE were significantly reduced by erosion (lung: mean SBRpre = 1.67, SBRpost = 4.83; brain: SBRpre = 1.06, SBRpost = 1.29) even with only a small number of iterations. Region dilation was applied to integrate further structures (e.g. at tumor borders) into a configurable neighbourhood for segmentation and quantitative analysis.
Conclusions:
The MO represent an efficient approach for the reduction of PVE artefacts in 3D-CT reconstructions and allow optimized visualization of individual objects.