Segmentation for MRA image: An improved level-set approach

Unsupervised segmentation of volumetric data is still a challenging task. Recently, level-set methods have received a great deal of attention, which combine global smoothness with the flexibility of topology changes and offer significant advantages over conventional statistical classification. However, level-set methods suffer from heavy computational burden because of a lot of iterations. We present a fast level-set framework based on the watershed algorithm for the segmentation of complicated structures from a volumetric data set. The driving application is the segmentation of 3-D human cerebrovascular structures from magnetic resonance angiography, which is known to be a very challenging segmentation problem due to the complexity of vessel geometry and intensity patterns. Experimental results show that the proposed method gives fast and accurate excellent segmentation.