Intervertebral disc degeneration evaluation apparatus and program

摘要

PPROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a method, a device and a program for evaluating the degree of progress of degeneration of an intervertebral disk objectively and quantitatively by using an MRI median sagittal tomographic image of the intervertebral disk. PSOLUTION: In the method for evaluating the degree of progress of degeneration of the intervertebral disk by using the MRI median sagittal tomographic image of the intervertebral disk, the luminance of the whole image is standardized with the luminance of the MRI image at the position of the spinal fluid as a reference, and a polygon whose apexes include at least two points of lower corners of the upper spinal bone and two points of upper angles of the lower spinal bone of the intervertebral disk is extracted as an intervertebral disk region. The standardized luminance centroid in the intervertebral disk region is found, and a region acquired by reducing the intervertebral disk region around the luminance centroid is extracted as a measuring region. The average of the standardized luminance in the measuring region is calculated, and the calculated average luminance is the evaluation value for evaluating the degeneration of the intervertebral disk. PCOPYRIGHT: (C)2011,JPO&INPIT