HT-BONE: a graphical user interface for the identification of bone profiles in CT images via extended Hough transform

Abstract

It has been recently proved that the computational analysis of X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) images allows clinicians to assess the alteration of compact bone asset due to hematological diseases. HT-BONE implements a new method, based on an extension of the Hough transform (HT) to a wide class of algebraic curves, for accurately measuring global and regional geometric properties of trabecular and compact bone districts. In the case of CT/PET analysis, the segmentation of the CT images provides masks for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) data, extracting the metabolic activity in the region surrounded by compact bone tissue. HT-BONE offers an intuitive, user-friendly, Matlab-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) for all input/output procedures and the automatic managing of the segmentation process also from non-expert users: the CT/PET data can be loaded and browsed easily and the only pre-preprocessing required from the user is the drawing of Regions Of Interest (ROIs) around the bone districts under consideration. For each bone district, specific families of curves, whose reliability has been already tested in previous works, is automatically selected for the recognition task via HT. As output, the software returns masks of the segmented compact bone regions, images of the Standard Uptake Values (SUV) in the masked regions of PET slices, and the values of the parameters in the curve equations utilized in the HT procedure. This information can be used for all pathologies and clinical conditions for which the alteration of the compact bone asset or bone marrow distribution plays a crucial role.

The Hough Transform and the Impact of Chronic Leukemia on the Compact Bone Tissue from CT-Images Analysis

“…A preliminary version of the Matlab-based software implementing the procedure presented in this paper is fully described in [9] and freely available at the following URL: http://mida.dima.unige.it/g_software_htbone.html.…”

“…For these reasons, it is important to distinguish between the compact and trabecular bone of this particular district. From a visual inspection of several CT images, it emerges that the sternum profile can be effectively described by using the curve of Lamet, introduced in Subsection 2.2.1 (see [8,9]). Then, the identification task is performed by means of the HT via curves of Lamet with m fixed to an even value in order to deal with a bounded curve (see equation 3).…”

Geometry of the Hough Transforms with Applications to Synthetic Data

“…and satisfying the assumptions and the properties mentioned above (in particular, the C λ 's are affine plane curves over C with infinitely many points in the affine plane over R, see also [16,Chapter 7]). Given a profile of interest in the image plane, the Hough approach detects a curve from the family F best approximating the profile by using well-established pattern recognition techniques for the recognition of curves in images (see [2,Sections 6,7] and also [12,Sections 4,5]). From a theoretical point of view, the detection procedure can be highlighted as follows.…”