Acetabular cartilage segmentation in CT arthrography based on a bone-normalized probabilistic atlas.

Abstract

Determination of acetabular cartilage loss in the hip joint is a clinically significant metric that requires image segmentation. A new semiautomatic method to segment acetabular cartilage in computed tomography (CT) arthrography scans was developed and tested. A semiautomatic segmentation method was developed based on the combination of anatomical and statistical information. Anatomical information is identified using the pelvic bone position and the contact area between cartilage and bone. Statistical information is acquired from CT intensity modeling of acetabular cartilage and adjacent tissue structures. This method was applied to the identification of acetabular cartilages in 37 intra-articular CT arthrography scans. The semiautomatic anatomical-statistical method performed better than other segmentation methods. The semiautomatic method was effective in noisy scans and was able to detect damaged cartilage. The new semiautomatic method segments acetabular cartilage by fully utilizing the statistical and anatomical information in CT arthrography datasets. This method for hip joint cartilage segmentation has potential for use in many clinical applications.