Force Feedback to Assist Active Contour Modelling for Tracheal Stenosis Segmentation

Abstract

Manual segmentation of structures for diagnosis and treatment of various diseases is a very time-consuming procedure. Therefore, some level of automation during the segmentation is desired, as it often significantly reduces the segmentation time. A typical solution is to allow manual interaction to steer the segmentation process, which is known as semiautomatic segmentation. In 2D, such interaction is usually achieved with click-and-drag operations, but in 3D a more sophisticated interface is called for. In this paper, we propose a semi-automatic Active Contour Modelling for the delineation of medical structures in 3D, tomographic images. Interaction is implemented with the employment of a 3D haptic device, which is used to steer the contour deformation towards the correct boundaries. In this way, valuable haptic feedback is provided about the 3D surface and its deformation. Experiments on simulated and real tracheal CT data showed that the proposed technique is an intuitive and effective segmentation mechanism.

Improving Interactions between a Power-Assist Robot System and Its Human User in Horizontal Transfer of Objects Using a Novel Adaptive Control Method

“…More human features will be investigated and be used to design the control to further improve the human-system interactions. The biomimetic and the psychophysical approaches to the control design will be considered for other assistive and interactive applications such as rehabilitation, healthcare, and so forth [22,35,[37][38][39].…”

“…We think that the position control is a good choice where the motion path is repeated, wellstructured, well-defined, certain, and the accuracy in the positional movement is desired. On the other hand, the force control may be a good choice where the environment is not well-defined, well-structured, uncertainty is high, motion path or environment is changeable, and so forth [10,11,17,21,22]. We used the position control because:…”