SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATIC BONE EXTRACTION FROM A MEDICAL IMAGE

摘要

A system and method for automatic bone extraction from a medical image is provided. A method for automatically extracting a bone from a medical image, comprises: performing a thresholding on the image in an intensity range of the bone to generate a first bit mask (240); eroding the first bit mask to remove connections between blood vessels and the bone to generate a second bit mask (250); performing a region growing on the second bit mask starting from a seed point within the intensity range to separate the bone from unconnected blood vessels and to generate a third bit mask (260); dilating the third bit mask to generate a fourth bit mask (270); and performing a region growing on the fourth bit mask starting from the seed point within the intensity range to generate a fifth bit mask representing the bone (280).