Comparison of extracted skeleton patterns of human femur and humerus using the line skeleton operation process and skeleton operation process

Abstract

This study presents and compares trabecular skeletal patterns of human femoral and humeral bone extracted by applying mathematical morphology and morphological filters. Two morphological filters and skeleton processing operations were used to extract the skeleton images. Images obtained with a combination of the single disc-shaped structuring element (5 pixel diameter) and the skeleton operation were compared to images obtained with the line structuring element and the line skeleton operation. Seven dentomaxillofacial radiologists evaluated the resulting images. Line skeleton images (both subset and sumset images) had fewer trabecular elements extracted and higher discontinuity as the operation number increased, and there were obvious differences between the simple skeleton images and the line skeleton images. With more study these differences may be useful in detecting changes in trabecular patterns resulting from disease, stress or altered function.