Prostate segmentation in ultrasound images with deformable shape priors

Abstract

Automated prostate segmentation in ultrasound images is a challenging task due to speckle noise, missing edge segments, and complex prostate peripheral anatomy. In this paper, a Bayesian prostate segmentation algorithm is presented. It combines both prior shape and image information for robust segmentation. In this study, the prostate shape was efficiently modeled using deformable superellipse. A flexible graphical user interface has been developed to facilitate the validation of our algorithm in a clinical setting. This algorithm was applied to 66 ultrasound images collected from 8 patients. The resulting mean error between the computer-generated boundaries and the manually-outlined boundaries was 1.39 ± 0.60 mm, which is significantly less than the variability between human experts.