Technical Program

Paper Detail

Paper:	FR-AM-OS3.3
Session:	Image Guided Diagnosis, Surgery and Therapy
Time:	Friday, April 7, 11:50 - 12:10
Presentation:	Oral
Title:	Computer Aided Evaluation of Ankylosing Spondylitis
Authors:	Sovira Tan; National Institutes of Health
	Jianhua Yao; National Institutes of Health
	Michael Ward; National Institutes of Health
	Lawrence Yao; National Institutes of Health
	Ronald M. Summers; National Institutes of Health
Abstract:	Ankylosing Spondylitis is a disease of the vertebra where abnormal bone structures (syndesmophytes) grow at intervertebral disk spaces. We provide a quantitative measure of the syndesmophytes using high resolution CT images. The first part of our algorithm segments the whole vertebra using a cascade of successive level sets that address the conflicting requirements of robustness to boundary discontinuities and flexibility needed to capture the fine structures caused by the pathology. The second part of the algorithm segments the syndesmophytes from the vertebral body and quantitates them. We use curvature information to locate the rim and end plates of the vertebra from where syndesmophytes develop. The results of our algorithm were validated by comparison with a semi-quantitative evaluation by a medical expert made by visually inspecting 3-D CT scans. Pearson correlation between the two evaluations is 0.898 (p<0.0001), and Spearman correlation is 0.906 (p<0.0001).

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