Virtual Colonoscopy is a minimally invasive procedure to detect polyps in the colon using three dimensional tomographic imaging. An important step in analyzing the image data is accurate localization of the lumen surface. Polyps protruding into the colon lumen can then be identified by analyzing the surface either manually or using computer assisted techniques. We have developed a method for lumen segmentation based on a 3D geometric deformable model (GDM) to provide an improved representation of the lumen surface. The results show the GDM can remove the surface holes or tunnels that can be created with thresholding techniques and demonstrates the ability to accurately locate the lumen surface in high contrast air- tissue boundaries while preserving relatively lower contrast boundaries of the houstra and polyps.
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