AUTOMATIC TECHNIQUE FOR LOCALIZING EXTERNALLY ATTACHED FIDUCIAL MARKERS IN VOLUME IMAGES OF THE HEAD

摘要

An automatic computer implemented technique which may be used for identifying markers and determining the centroids of fiducial markers (40a, 40b, 40c) (e.g., cylindrical fiducial markers) attached to the head in magnetic resonance (MR) and X-ray computed tomography (CT) volume images, is disclosed. This technique may be referred to as image space localization. A first portion of the technique identifies many candidate voxel points (172) included in a bright area of the image which may correspond to candidate markers. A second portion of the technique selects from the identified candidate voxels a predetermined number of candidate points of the image volume that are most likely to lie within an actual fiducial marker (174). The centroid for each of these markers is then determined. The method finds markers whose images are of a higher intensity than their surroundings and which have a given shape and size.