Automatic Liver Segmentation from 2D CT Images Using an Approximate Contour Model

Due to its precision, computed tomography (CT) is now generally used to image the liver and diagnose its diseases. Computer-assisted methods aimed at facilitating the extraction of organ shapes from medical images and helping to diagnose disease entities are rapidly developing. This study presents a new method of automatically segmenting the shape of the liver, both for cases free of lesions and those showing certain disease units, i.e. focused lesions like hemangiomas and hepatomas. For the 1,330 2D CT images of the abdominal cavity and liver analysed, the Dices similarity coefficient amounted to 81.3 %. The method proposed is to be used in an IT system supporting liver diagnostics.