PSO for Graph-Based Segmentation of Wrist Bones in Bone Age Assessment

摘要

Skeletal maturity is a reliable indicator of growth and skeletal bone age assessment?(BAA) is used in the management and diagnosis of endocrine disorders. Bone age can?be estimated from the left-hand wrist radiograph of the subject. The work presented?in this paper proposes the development of an efficient technique for segmentation of?hand-wrist radiographs and identifying the bones specially used as Regions of Interest?(ROIs) for the bone age estimation process. The segmentation method is based on?the concept of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and it consists of graph-based?segmentation procedure. The system provides an option of either segmenting all the?bones totally or segmenting only the specific ROIs under consideration. The system?is validated with a data set of 100 images with 50 radiographs of female subjects and?50 of male subjects. The time taken for segmenting each bone is calculated and the?results are discussed.