Automatic Segmentation System Research Articles

Machine learning for automated 3-dimensional segmentation of the spine and suggested placement of pedicle screws based on intraoperative cone-beam computer tomography.

The goal of this study was to develop and validate a system for automatic segmentation of the spine, pedicle identification, and screw path suggestion for use with an intraoperative 3D surgical navigation system. Cone-beam CT (CBCT) images of the spines of 21 cadavers were obtained. An automated model-based approach was used for segmentation. Using machine learning methodology, the algorithm was trained and validated on the image data sets. For measuring accuracy, surface area errors of the automatic segmentation were compared to the manually outlined reference surface on CBCT. To further test both technical and clinical accuracy, the algorithm was applied to a set of 20 clinical cases. The authors evaluated the system's accuracy in pedicle identification by measuring the distance between the user-defined midpoint of each pedicle and the automatically segmented midpoint. Finally, 2 independent surgeons performed a qualitative evaluation of the segmentation to judge whether it was adequate to guide surgical navigation and whether it would have resulted in a clinically acceptable pedicle screw placement. The clinically relevant pedicle identification and automatic pedicle screw planning accuracy was 86.1%. By excluding patients with severe spinal deformities (i.e., Cobb angle > 75° and severe spinal degeneration) and previous surgeries, a success rate of 95.4% was achieved. The mean time (± SD) for automatic segmentation and screw planning in 5 vertebrae was 11 ± 4 seconds. The technology investigated has the potential to aid surgeons in navigational planning and improve surgical navigation workflow while maintaining patient safety.

Cardiac-DeepIED: Automatic Pixel-Level Deep Segmentation for Cardiac Bi-Ventricle Using Improved End-to-End Encoder-Decoder Network.

Accurate segmentation of cardiac bi-ventricle (CBV) from magnetic resonance (MR) images has a great significance to analyze and evaluate the function of the cardiovascular system. However, the complex structure of CBV image makes fully automatic segmentation as a well-known challenge. In this paper, we propose an improved end-to-end encoder-decoder network for CBV segmentation from the pixel level view (Cardiac-DeepIED). In our framework, we explicitly solve the high variability of complex cardiac structures through an improved encoder-decoder architecture which consists of Fire dilated modules and D-Fire dilated modules. This improved encoder-decoder architecture has the advantages of being capable of obtaining semantic task-aware representation and preserving fine-grained information. In addition, our method can dynamically capture potential spatiotemporal correlations between consecutive cardiac MR images through specially designed convolutional long-term and short-term memory structure; it can simulate spatiotemporal contexts between consecutive frame images. The combination of these modules enables the entire network to get an accurate, robust segmentation result. The proposed method is evaluated on the 145 clinical subjects with leave-one-out cross-validation. The average dice metric (DM) is up to 0.96 (left ventricle), 0.89 (myocardium), and 0.903 (right ventricle). The performance of our method outperforms state-of-the-art methods. These results demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of our method for CBV regions segmentation at the pixel-level. It also reveals the proposed automated segmentation system can be embedded into the clinical environment to accelerate the quantification of CBV and expanded to volume analysis, regional wall thickness analysis, and three LV dimensions analysis.

CCDF: Automatic system for segmentation and recognition of fruit crops diseases based on correlation coefficient and deep CNN features

In the agriculture farming business, plant diseases are the major reason for monetary misfortunes around the globe. It is an imperative factor, as it causes significant diminution in both quality and capacity of growing crops. Therefore, detection and taxonomy of various plants diseases is crucial, and it demands utmost attention. In plants, fruits act a major source of nutrients worldwide, however, various range of diseases adversely affect the production as well as the quality of the fruits. Therefore, utilization of an efficient machine vision technology not only detects the diseases at their early stages but also classify them accordingly. This research is primarily focusing on the detection and classification of various fruits diseases based on correlation coefficient and deep features (CCDF). The proposed technique incorporates two major steps of infected regions detection and finally feature extraction and classification. In the first step, initially contrast of input image is enhanced by utilizing a hybrid method - followed by proposed correlation coefficient-based segmentation method which separates the infected regions from the background. In the second step, two deep pre-trained models (VGG16, caffe AlexNet) are utilized for feature extraction of selected diseases (apple scab, apple rot, banana sigotka, banana cordial leaf spot, banana diamond leaf spot and deightoniella leaf and fruit spot). Parallel features fusion step is embedded to consolidate the extracted features prior to max-pooling step. Selection of most discriminant features are being performed using genetic algorithm before subjecting to the final stage of classification using mutli-class SVM. Experiments are being performed on publicly available datasets - plant village and CASC-IFW datasets to achieve the classification accuracy of 98.60%. Qualitative analysis of achieved results clearly shows that the proposed method outperforms several existing methods in terms of greater precision and improved classification accuracy.

AUTOMATED BRAIN TUMOR SEGMENTATION IN MR IMAGES USING A HIDDEN MARKOV CLASSIFIER FRAMEWORK TRAINED BY SVD-DERIVED FEATURES

Interpreting brain MR images are becoming automated, to such extent that in some cases “all” the diagnostic procedure is done by computers. Therefore, diagnosing the patients is done by a comparably higher accuracy. Computer models that have been trained by a priori knowledge act as the decision makers. They make decisions about each new image, based on the training data fed to them previously. In case of cancerous images, the model picks that image up, and isolates the malignant tissue in the image as neatly as possible. In this paper we have developed an unsupervised learning system for automatic tumor segmentation and detection that can be applied to low contrast images.

Atlas pre-selection strategies to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of multi-atlas brain segmentation tools.

Multi-atlas brain segmentation of human brain MR images allows quantification research in structural neuroimaging. To achieve high accuracy and computational efficiency of segmentation relies on a custom subset of atlases for each target subject. However, the criterion for atlas pre-selection remains an open question. In this study, two atlas pre-selection approaches based on location-based feature matching were proposed and compared to random and mutual information-based methods using a database of 47 atlases. A varying number of atlases ranked top with hierarchical structural granularity were compared using Dice overlap. The results indicated that the proposed 4L approach consistently led to the highest level of accuracy at a given number of employed atlases in both adult and geriatric populations. In addition, the proposed two methods (4L and LV) can reduce 20 times computational time compared with the stereotypical mutual information-based method. Our pre-selection strategy would provide better segmentation performance in terms of both accuracy and efficiency. The proposed atlas pre-selection will be further implemented into our online automatic brain image segmentation system (www.mricloud.org).

The use of new delineation tool "MIRADA" at the level of regional lymph nodes, step-by-step development and first results for early-stage breast cancer patients.

To describe the practical procedure of implementation and optimization of delineation using "Mirada" software, as well as evaluation of the automatic segmentation for the daily practice of lymph nodes (LN) and organs at risk (OARs) in early stage breast cancer patients. 40 patients' CT scans in treatment position were selected and recontoured according to the European Society of Therapeutic Radiation Oncology guidelines. The atlas of dataset was then created for automatic delineation. 30 patients with breast/chest wall and lymph nodes regions irradiated were recruited for evaluation. With the same treatment position, the CT scan images were acquired and then contoured by the MIRADA system automatically as well as by the radiation oncologist manually (as the reference). The conformity index (CI) was used to evaluate the concordance between both of them. The mean time for manual contour was 24.1 ± 5.1 and 26.4 ± 2.8 min for the LN and the OARs respectively. All the volumes of interest were contoured using the software (including corrections) in 30 min, which reduced the time of delineation of target volumes and OAR by about 40%. Of the 30 cases evaluated, the mean CI of 5 principal OARs showed ≥0.8. While the automatic contour of LN was less satisfactory with mean CI of 0.43 ± 0.1(0.23-0.52). For the breast cancer patients, the studied software permitted to save time for delineation with acceptable OAR contours. The improvement of LN regions contour is needed. More cases and further evaluation are needed for the system to realize its routine use. It's the first description and evaluation of the automatic delineation and segmentation system for the breast cancer.

Robust abdominal organ segmentation using regional convolutional neural networks

A fully automatic system for abdominal organ segmentation is presented. As a first step, an organ localization is obtained via a robust and efficient feature registration method where the center of the organ is estimated together with a region of interest surrounding the center. Then, a convolutional neural network performing voxelwise classification is applied. Two convolutional neural networks of different architecture are compared. The first one has a structure similar to networks used for classification and is applied using a sliding window approach. The second one has a structure allowing it to be applied in a fully convolutional manner reducing computation time. Despite limited training data, our experimental results are on par with state-of-the-art approaches that have been developed over many years. More specifically the method is applied to the MICCAI2015 challenge “Multi-Atlas Labeling Beyond the Cranial Vault” in the free competition for organ segmentation in the abdomen. The method performed well for both types of convolutional neural networks. For the fully convolutional network a mean Dice coefficient of 0.767 was achieved, for the network applied with sliding window this number was 0.757.

Évaluation d’un logiciel pour la délinéation automatique des organes à risques et des volumes cibles ganglionnaires chez des patientes prises en charge pour un cancer du sein

PurposeIntensity-modulated radiotherapy needs the strict delineation of target volumes as well as organs at risk and the time used for this procedure is long. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the Workflow Box system (Mirada Medical, UK) for automatic delineation and segmentation for everyday use of organs at risk and lymph nodes delineation in patients treated for early stage breast cancer. Material and methodsTwenty patients’ CT scans in treatment position for their breast cancer radiotherapy were delineated in respect of the ESTRO delineation guidelines to begin the creation of automatic delineation atlas. Then 30 other CT scans were delineated this time by the automatic delineation system and by the radiation oncologist (reference delineation plan). The precision of the delineation was evaluated using the overlap volume index and evaluation of standard deviation (SD). ResultsThe study of organs at risk has shown that the mean overlap volumes were between 0.49 (SD=0.21) and 0.97 (ET=0.03). Five organs at risk out of nine had overlap volumes at least 0.8. The mean overlap volume for all organs at risk was 0.77 (SD=0.17). The system was less performing for the lymph nodes with a mean overlap volume of 0.43 (SD=0.1) and ranging between 0.23 (SD=0.13) and 0.52 (SD=0.1). The use of this system reduced the delineation time by 40% per patient. ConclusionsFor patients with breast cancer, the system for automatic delineation and segmentation Workflow Box (Mirada Medical, UK) permitted to safely shorten the time for delineation with acceptable organs at risk delineation. Improvement of lymph node volumes is needed. A new evaluation will be realized after using the system in routine practice.

AUTOMATIC BODY LOCALIZATION AND BRAIN VENTRICLE SEGMENTATION IN 3D HIGH FREQUENCY ULTRASOUND IMAGES OF MOUSE EMBRYOS.

This paper presents a fully automatic segmentation system for whole-body high-frequency ultrasound (HFU) images of mouse embryos that can simultaneously segment the body contour and the brain ventricles (BVs). Our system first locates a region of interest (ROI), which covers the interior of the uterus, by sub-surface analysis. Then, it segments the ROI into BVs, the body, the amniotic fluid, and the uterine wall, using nested graph cut. Simultaneously multilevel thresholding is applied to the whole-body image to propose candidate BV components. These candidates are further truncated by the embryo mask (body+BVs) to refine the BV candidates. Finally, subsets of all candidate BVs are compared with pre-trained spring models describing valid BV structures, to identify true BV components. The system can segment the body accurately in most cases based on visual inspection, and achieves average Dice similarity coefficient of 0.8924 ± 0.043 for the BVs on 36 HFU image volumes.

A fully automated cell segmentation and morphometric parameter system for quantifying corneal endothelial cell morphology

Background and ObjectiveCorneal endothelial cell abnormalities may be associated with a number of corneal and systemic diseases. Damage to the endothelial cells can significantly affect corneal transparency by altering hydration of the corneal stroma, which can lead to irreversible endothelial cell pathology requiring corneal transplantation. To date, quantitative analysis of endothelial cell abnormalities has been manually performed by ophthalmologists using time consuming and highly subjective semi-automatic tools, which require an operator interaction. We developed and applied a fully-automated and real-time system, termed the Corneal Endothelium Analysis System (CEAS) for the segmentation and computation of endothelial cells in images of the human cornea obtained by in vivo corneal confocal microscopy. MethodsFirst, a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) Band-pass filter is applied to reduce noise and enhance the image quality to make the cells more visible. Secondly, endothelial cell boundaries are detected using watershed transformations and Voronoi tessellations to accurately quantify the morphological parameters of the human corneal endothelial cells. The performance of the automated segmentation system was tested against manually traced ground-truth images based on a database consisting of 40 corneal confocal endothelial cell images in terms of segmentation accuracy and obtained clinical features. In addition, the robustness and efficiency of the proposed CEAS system were compared with manually obtained cell densities using a separate database of 40 images from controls (n = 11), obese subjects (n = 16) and patients with diabetes (n = 13). ResultsThe Pearson correlation coefficient between automated and manual endothelial cell densities is 0.9 (p < 0.0001) and a Bland–Altman plot shows that 95% of the data are between the 2SD agreement lines. ConclusionsWe demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the CEAS system, and the possibility of utilizing it in a real world clinical setting to enable rapid diagnosis and for patient follow-up, with an execution time of only 6 seconds per image.

A Novel Approach Canberra Measure Minimal Spanning Tree Using Fuzzy C-Means Based on Gaussian Function for Image Data Mining

Clustering analysis has been an emerging research issue in data mining due to its variety of applications. In recently, mathematical algorithm supported automatic segmentation system plays an important role in clustering of images. The fuzzy c-means clustering is a method of cluster analysis which aims to partition n data points into k-clusters. The conventional FCM-based algorithm considers no spatial content information, which means it sensitive to noise. Unsupervised techniques need to be employed, which can be based on minimal spanning tree generated by comparing spatial neighbourhood information, the MST based clustering algorithms have been widely used due to their ability to detect clusters with irregular boundaries. We propose an automatic fuzzy c-means initialization algorithm based on Canberra distance minimal spanning tree for the purpose of segmentation of medical images, where vertices and edges are labelled with multi-dimensional vectors. A Canberra distance measure based, construct the minimal spanning tree clustering algorithm. An efficient method for calculating membership and updating prototypes by minimizing the new objective function of Gaussian based fuzzy c-means. The algorithm uses a new cluster validation criterion based on the geometric property of data partition of the dataset in order to find the proper number of cluster at each level. In this algorithm to apply medical images to reduce the inhomogeneity and allow the labelling of a pixel to be influenced by the labels in its immediate neighbourhood and reduces the time complexity and better clustering results than the existing traditional minimal spanning tree algorithm. The performance of proposed algorithm has been shown with random data set, partition coefficient and validation function are used to evaluate the validity of clustering and then new cluster separation approach to optimal number of clustering. Also this paper compares the results of proposed method with the results of existing basic fuzzy c-means.

Annotating and modeling empathy in spoken conversations

Empathy, as defined in behavioral sciences, expresses the ability of human beings to recognize, understand and react to emotions, attitudes and beliefs of others. In this paper, we address two related problems in automatic affective behavior analysis: the design of the annotation protocol and the automatic recognition of empathy from human–human dyadic spoken conversations. We propose and evaluate an annotation scheme for empathy inspired by the modal model of emotions. The annotation scheme was evaluated on a corpus of real-life, dyadic spoken conversations. In the context of behavioral analysis, we designed an automatic segmentation and classification system for empathy. Given the different speech and language levels of representation where empathy may be communicated, we investigated features derived from the lexical and acoustic spaces. The feature development process was designed to support both the fusion and automatic selection of relevant features from a high dimensional space. The automatic classification system was evaluated on call center conversations where it showed significantly better performance than the baseline.

A fully automated approach for baby cry signal segmentation and boundary detection of expiratory and inspiratory episodes.

The detection of cry sounds is generally an important pre-processing step for various applications involving cry analysis such as diagnostic systems, electronic monitoring systems, emotion detection, and robotics for baby caregivers. Given its complexity, an automatic cry segmentation system is a rather challenging topic. In this paper, a framework for automatic cry sound segmentation for application in a cry-based diagnostic system has been proposed. The contribution of various additional time- and frequency-domain features to increase the robustness of a Gaussian mixture model/hidden Markov model (GMM/HMM)-based cry segmentation system in noisy environments is studied. A fully automated segmentation algorithm to extract cry sound components, namely, audible expiration and inspiration, is introduced and is grounded on two approaches: statistical analysis based on GMMs or HMMs classifiers and a post-processing method based on intensity, zero crossing rate, and fundamental frequency feature extraction. The main focus of this paper is to extend the systems developed in previous works to include a post-processing stage with a set of corrective and enhancing tools to improve the classification performance. This full approach allows to precisely determine the start and end points of the expiratory and inspiratory components of a cry signal, EXP and INSV, respectively, in any given sound signal. Experimental results have indicated the effectiveness of the proposed solution. EXP and INSV detection rates of approximately 94.29% and 92.16%, respectively, were achieved by applying a tenfold cross-validation technique to avoid over-fitting.

Automatic blood vessels segmentation based on different retinal maps from OCTA scans

The retinal vascular network reflects the health of the retina, which is a useful diagnostic indicator of systemic vascular. Therefore, the segmentation of retinal blood vessels is a powerful method for diagnosing vascular diseases. This paper presents an automatic segmentation system for retinal blood vessels from Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA) images. The system segments blood vessels from the superficial and deep retinal maps for normal and diabetic cases. Initially, we reduced the noise and improved the contrast of the OCTA images by using the Generalized Gauss-Markov random field (GGMRF) model. Secondly, we proposed a joint Markov-Gibbs random field (MGRF) model to segment the retinal blood vessels from other background tissues. It integrates both appearance and spatial models in addition to the prior probability model of OCTA images. The higher order MGRF (HO-MGRF) model in addition to the 1st-order intensity model are used to consider the spatial information in order to overcome the low contrast between vessels and other tissues. Finally, we refined the segmentation by extracting connected regions using a 2D connectivity filter. The proposed segmentation system was trained and tested on 47 data sets, which are 23 normal data sets and 24 data sets for diabetic patients. To evaluate the accuracy and robustness of the proposed segmentation framework, we used three different metrics, which are Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), absolute vessels volume difference (VVD), and area under the curve (AUC). The results on OCTA data sets (DSC=95.04±3.75%, VVD=8.51±1.49%, and AUC=95.20±1.52%) show the promise of the proposed segmentation approach.

Pixel-Level Deep Segmentation: Artificial Intelligence Quantifies Muscle on Computed Tomography for Body Morphometric Analysis

Pretreatment risk stratification is key for personalized medicine. While many physicians rely on an “eyeball test” to assess whether patients will tolerate major surgery or chemotherapy, “eyeballing” is inherently subjective and difficult to quantify. The concept of morphometric age derived from cross-sectional imaging has been found to correlate well with outcomes such as length of stay, morbidity, and mortality. However, the determination of the morphometric age is time intensive and requires highly trained experts. In this study, we propose a fully automated deep learning system for the segmentation of skeletal muscle cross-sectional area (CSA) on an axial computed tomography image taken at the third lumbar vertebra. We utilized a fully automated deep segmentation model derived from an extended implementation of a fully convolutional network with weight initialization of an ImageNet pre-trained model, followed by post processing to eliminate intramuscular fat for a more accurate analysis. This experiment was conducted by varying window level (WL), window width (WW), and bit resolutions in order to better understand the effects of the parameters on the model performance. Our best model, fine-tuned on 250 training images and ground truth labels, achieves 0.93 ± 0.02 Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) and 3.68 ± 2.29% difference between predicted and ground truth muscle CSA on 150 held-out test cases. Ultimately, the fully automated segmentation system can be embedded into the clinical environment to accelerate the quantification of muscle and expanded to volume analysis of 3D datasets.

Computing quantitative indicators of structural renal damage in pediatric DMSA scans

ObjectivesThe proposal and implementation of a computational framework for the quantification of structural renal damage from 99mTc-dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) scans.The aim of this work is to propose, implement, and validate a computational framework for the quantification of structural renal damage from DMSA scans and in an observer-independent manner. Materials and methodsFrom a set of 16 pediatric DMSA-positive scans and 16 matched controls and using both expert-guided and automatic approaches, a set of image-derived quantitative indicators was computed based on the relative size, intensity and histogram distribution of the lesion. A correlation analysis was conducted in order to investigate the association of these indicators with other clinical data of interest in this scenario, including C-reactive protein (CRP), white cell count, vesicoureteral reflux, fever, relative perfusion, and the presence of renal sequelae in a 6-month follow-up DMSA scan. ResultsA fully automatic lesion detection and segmentation system was able to successfully classify DMSA-positive from negative scans (AUC=0.92, sensitivity=81% and specificity=94%). The image-computed relative size of the lesion correlated with the presence of fever and CRP levels (p<0.05), and a measurement derived from the distribution histogram of the lesion obtained significant performance results in the detection of permanent renal damage (AUC=0.86, sensitivity=100% and specificity=75%). ConclusionsThe proposal and implementation of a computational framework for the quantification of structural renal damage from DMSA scans showed a promising potential to complement visual diagnosis and non-imaging indicators.

Automatic anuran identification using noise removal and audio activity detection

The use of bioacoustics to identify animal species has huge potential for use in biology and conservation research. Fields that could be greatly enhanced by the use of bioacoustical techniques include the study of animal behavior, soundscape ecology, species diversity assessments, and long-term monitoring - for example to further our understanding of the conservation status of numerous species and their vulnerability to different threats. In this study, we focus primarily, but not exclusively, on the identification of anuran vocalizations. We chose anurans both because they tend to be quite vocal and because they are considered indicators of environmental health. We present a system for semi-automated segmentation of anuran calls, based on sound enhancement method that uses Minimum-Mean Square Error (MMSE) Short-Time Spectral Amplitude (STSA) estimator and noise suppression algorithm using Spectral Subtraction (SS), and an automated classification system for 17 anuran species based on Mel-Frequency Cepstrum Coefficients (MFCC) and the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM). To our knowledge this is the first study that applies this combination of methods for animal identification. This technique achieves accuracies of between 96.1% and 100% per species. Experimental results show that the semi-automated segmentation technique performs better than automated segmentation systems, improving the average success rate to 98.61%. The effectiveness of the proposed anuran identification system in natural environment is thus verified. This work presents a first approach to future tools which can signify a significant advance in the procedures to analysis in a semiautomatic or even in an automatic way to analysis indicators of environmental health based on expert and intelligent systems.

Stroke Risk Stratification and its Validation using Ultrasonic Echolucent Carotid Wall Plaque Morphology: A Machine Learning Paradigm

Stroke risk stratification based on grayscale morphology of the ultrasound carotid wall has recently been shown to have a promise in classification of high risk versus low risk plaque or symptomatic versus asymptomatic plaques. In previous studies, this stratification has been mainly based on analysis of the far wall of the carotid artery. Due to the multifocal nature of atherosclerotic disease, the plaque growth is not restricted to the far wall alone. This paper presents a new approach for stroke risk assessment by integrating assessment of both the near and far walls of the carotid artery using grayscale morphology of the plaque. Further, this paper presents a scientific validation system for stroke risk assessment. Both these innovations have never been presented before.The methodology consists of an automated segmentation system of the near wall and far wall regions in grayscale carotid B-mode ultrasound scans. Sixteen grayscale texture features are computed, and fed into the machine learning system. The training system utilizes the lumen diameter to create ground truth labels for the stratification of stroke risk. The cross-validation procedure is adapted in order to obtain the machine learning testing classification accuracy through the use of three sets of partition protocols: (5, 10, and Jack Knife).The mean classification accuracy over all the sets of partition protocols for the automated system in the far and near walls is 95.08% and 93.47%, respectively. The corresponding accuracies for the manual system are 94.06% and 92.02%, respectively. The precision of merit of the automated machine learning system when compared against manual risk assessment system are 98.05% and 97.53% for the far and near walls, respectively. The ROC of the risk assessment system for the far and near walls is close to 1.0 demonstrating high accuracy.

Iris Recognition Using Curve let Transformation Based on Gabor Filter&amp; SVM

The work presented in this thesis involved developing an „open-source‟ iris recognition system in order to verify both the uniqueness of the human iris and also its performance as a biometric. For determining the recognition performance of the system two databases of digitized greyscale eye images were used. The iris recognition system consists of an automatic segmentation system that is based on Support Vector Machine and is able to localize the circular iris and pupil region, occluding eyelids and eyelashes, and reflections. The extracted iris region was then normalized into a rectangular block with constant dimensions to account for imaging inconsistencies. Finally, the phase data from 1D Log-Gabor filters was extracted and quantized to four levels to encode the unique pattern of the iris into a bit-wise biometric template.

Computing quantitative indicators of structural renal damage in pediatric DMSA scans.

The proposal and implementation of a computational framework for the quantification of structural renal damage from 99mTc-dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) scans. The aim of this work is to propose, implement, and validate a computational framework for the quantification of structural renal damage from DMSA scans and in an observer-independent manner. From a set of 16 pediatric DMSA-positive scans and 16 matched controls and using both expert-guided and automatic approaches, a set of image-derived quantitative indicators was computed based on the relative size, intensity and histogram distribution of the lesion. A correlation analysis was conducted in order to investigate the association of these indicators with other clinical data of interest in this scenario, including C-reactive protein (CRP), white cell count, vesicoureteral reflux, fever, relative perfusion, and the presence of renal sequelae in a 6-month follow-up DMSA scan. A fully automatic lesion detection and segmentation system was able to successfully classify DMSA-positive from negative scans (AUC=0.92, sensitivity=81% and specificity=94%). The image-computed relative size of the lesion correlated with the presence of fever and CRP levels (p<0.05), and a measurement derived from the distribution histogram of the lesion obtained significant performance results in the detection of permanent renal damage (AUC=0.86, sensitivity=100% and specificity=75%). The proposal and implementation of a computational framework for the quantification of structural renal damage from DMSA scans showed a promising potential to complement visual diagnosis and non-imaging indicators.