Learning continuous shape priors from sparse data with neural implicit functions.

Statistical shape models are an essential tool for various tasks in medical image analysis, including shape generation, reconstruction and classification. Shape models are learned from a population of example shapes, which are typically obtained through segmentation of volumetric medical images. In clinical practice, highly anisotropic volumetric scans with large slice distances are prevalent, e.g., to reduce radiation exposure in CT or image acquisition time in MR imaging. For existing shape modeling approaches, the resolution of the emerging model is limited to the resolution of the training shapes. Therefore, any missing information between slices prohibits existing methods from learning a high-resolution shape prior. We propose a novel shape modeling approach that can be trained on sparse, binary segmentation masks with large slice distances. This is achieved through employing continuous shape representations based on neural implicit functions. After training, our model can reconstruct shapes from various sparse inputs at high target resolutions beyond the resolution of individual training examples. We successfully reconstruct high-resolution shapes from as few as three orthogonal slices. Furthermore, our shape model allows us to embed various sparse segmentation masks into a common, low-dimensional latent space - independent of the acquisition direction, resolution, spacing, and field of view. We show that the emerging latent representation discriminates between healthy and pathological shapes, even when provided with sparse segmentation masks. Lastly, we qualitatively demonstrate that the emerging latent space is smooth and captures characteristic modes of shape variation. We evaluate our shape model on two anatomical structures: the lumbar vertebra and the distal femur, both from publicly available datasets.

VerSe: A Vertebrae labelling and segmentation benchmark for multi-detector CT images.

Vertebral labelling and segmentation are two fundamental tasks in an automated spine processing pipeline. Reliable and accurate processing of spine images is expected to benefit clinical decision support systems for diagnosis, surgery planning, and population-based analysis of spine and bone health. However, designing automated algorithms for spine processing is challenging predominantly due to considerable variations in anatomy and acquisition protocols and due to a severe shortage of publicly available data. Addressing these limitations, the Large Scale Vertebrae Segmentation Challenge (VerSe) was organised in conjunction with the International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) in 2019 and 2020, with a call for algorithms tackling the labelling and segmentation of vertebrae. Two datasets containing a total of 374 multi-detector CT scans from 355 patients were prepared and 4505 vertebrae have individually been annotated at voxel level by a human-machine hybrid algorithm (https://osf.io/nqjyw/, https://osf.io/t98fz/). A total of 25 algorithms were benchmarked on these datasets. In this work, we present the results of this evaluation and further investigate the performance variation at the vertebra level, scan level, and different fields of view. We also evaluate the generalisability of the approaches to an implicit domain shift in data by evaluating the top-performing algorithms of one challenge iteration on data from the other iteration. The principal takeaway from VerSe: the performance of an algorithm in labelling and segmenting a spine scan hinges on its ability to correctly identify vertebrae in cases of rare anatomical variations. The VerSe content and code can be accessed at: https://github.com/anjany/verse.