Automated Selection of Trabecular Bone Regions in Knee Radiographs

Osteoarthritic (OA) changes in knee joints can be assessed by analyzing the structure of trabecular bone (TB) in the tibia. This analysis is performed on TB regions selected manually by a human operator on x-ray images. Manual selection is time-consuming, tedious, and expensive. Even if a radiologis...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Podsiadlo, P, Wolski, M, Stachowiak, Gwidon
Format: Journal Article
Published: American Association of Physicists in Medicine 2008
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/42050
_version_ 1848756311939874816
author Podsiadlo, P
Wolski, M
Stachowiak, Gwidon
author_facet Podsiadlo, P
Wolski, M
Stachowiak, Gwidon
author_sort Podsiadlo, P
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Osteoarthritic (OA) changes in knee joints can be assessed by analyzing the structure of trabecular bone (TB) in the tibia. This analysis is performed on TB regions selected manually by a human operator on x-ray images. Manual selection is time-consuming, tedious, and expensive. Even if a radiologist expert or highly trained person is available to select regions, high inter- and intraobserver variabilities are still possible. A fully automated image segmentation method was, therefore, developed to select the bone regions for numerical analyses of changes in bone structures. The newly developed method consists of image preprocessing, delineation of cortical bone plates (active shape model), and location of regions of interest (ROI). The method was trained on an independent set of 40 x-ray images. Automatically selected regions were compared to the "gold standard" that contains ROIs selected manually by a radiologist expert on 132 x-ray images. All images were acquired from subjects locked in a standardized standing position using a radiography rig. The size of each ROI is 12.8×12.8 mm. The automated method results showed a good agreement with the gold standard [similarity index (SI) =0.83 (medial) and 0.81 (lateral) and the offset= [-1.78, 1.27] × [-0.65,0.26] mm (medial) and [-2.15, 1.59] × [-0.58, 0.52] mm (lateral)]. Bland and Altman plots were constructed for fractal signatures, and changes of fractal dimensions (FD) to region offsets calculated between the gold standard and automatically selected regions were calculated. The plots showed a random scatter and the 95% confidence intervals were (-0.006, 0.008) and (-0.001, 0.011). The changes of FDs to region offsets were less than 0.035. Previous studies showed that differences in FDs between non-OA and OA bone regions were greater than 0.05. ROIs were also selected by a second radiologist and then evaluated. Results indicated that the newly developed method could replace a human operator and produces bone regions with an accuracy that is sufficient for fractal analyses of bone texture.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T09:10:11Z
format Journal Article
id curtin-20.500.11937-42050
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T09:10:11Z
publishDate 2008
publisher American Association of Physicists in Medicine
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-420502017-09-13T16:05:51Z Automated Selection of Trabecular Bone Regions in Knee Radiographs Podsiadlo, P Wolski, M Stachowiak, Gwidon Trabecular bone Osteoarthritis Knee radiography Computer-aided diagnosis Osteoarthritic (OA) changes in knee joints can be assessed by analyzing the structure of trabecular bone (TB) in the tibia. This analysis is performed on TB regions selected manually by a human operator on x-ray images. Manual selection is time-consuming, tedious, and expensive. Even if a radiologist expert or highly trained person is available to select regions, high inter- and intraobserver variabilities are still possible. A fully automated image segmentation method was, therefore, developed to select the bone regions for numerical analyses of changes in bone structures. The newly developed method consists of image preprocessing, delineation of cortical bone plates (active shape model), and location of regions of interest (ROI). The method was trained on an independent set of 40 x-ray images. Automatically selected regions were compared to the "gold standard" that contains ROIs selected manually by a radiologist expert on 132 x-ray images. All images were acquired from subjects locked in a standardized standing position using a radiography rig. The size of each ROI is 12.8×12.8 mm. The automated method results showed a good agreement with the gold standard [similarity index (SI) =0.83 (medial) and 0.81 (lateral) and the offset= [-1.78, 1.27] × [-0.65,0.26] mm (medial) and [-2.15, 1.59] × [-0.58, 0.52] mm (lateral)]. Bland and Altman plots were constructed for fractal signatures, and changes of fractal dimensions (FD) to region offsets calculated between the gold standard and automatically selected regions were calculated. The plots showed a random scatter and the 95% confidence intervals were (-0.006, 0.008) and (-0.001, 0.011). The changes of FDs to region offsets were less than 0.035. Previous studies showed that differences in FDs between non-OA and OA bone regions were greater than 0.05. ROIs were also selected by a second radiologist and then evaluated. Results indicated that the newly developed method could replace a human operator and produces bone regions with an accuracy that is sufficient for fractal analyses of bone texture. 2008 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/42050 10.1118/1.2905025 American Association of Physicists in Medicine restricted
spellingShingle Trabecular bone
Osteoarthritis
Knee radiography
Computer-aided diagnosis
Podsiadlo, P
Wolski, M
Stachowiak, Gwidon
Automated Selection of Trabecular Bone Regions in Knee Radiographs
title Automated Selection of Trabecular Bone Regions in Knee Radiographs
title_full Automated Selection of Trabecular Bone Regions in Knee Radiographs
title_fullStr Automated Selection of Trabecular Bone Regions in Knee Radiographs
title_full_unstemmed Automated Selection of Trabecular Bone Regions in Knee Radiographs
title_short Automated Selection of Trabecular Bone Regions in Knee Radiographs
title_sort automated selection of trabecular bone regions in knee radiographs
topic Trabecular bone
Osteoarthritis
Knee radiography
Computer-aided diagnosis
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/42050