Intestinal region reconstruction of ileus cases from 3D CT images based on graphical representation and its visualization

摘要

This paper proposes an intestinal region reconstruction method from CT volumes of ileus cases. Previous method generated binarized intestinal segmentation results, which often contained incorrect contacts or loops. We utilize the 3D U-Net to estimate a distance map, which is high only at the intestines' centerlincs. The watershed algorithm is utilized to obtain regions around the intestines' centerlines. Since those regions are not covering the intestines' peripheral parts, they do not contain incorrect contacts or loops. Those regions are connected and represented as graphs. Furthermore, graphical representation and processing allow us to analyze how intestines are running. Experimental results using 19 CT volumes showed that our proposed method correctly reconstructed the intestines. These results were useful for intuitive understanding the shape of the intestines and finding obstructions.