Segmentation and image navigation in digitized spine x-rays

The National Library of Medicine has archived a collection of 17,000 digitized x-rays of the cervical and lumbar spines. Extensive health information has been collected on the subjects of these x-rays, but no information has been derived from the image contents themselves. We are researching algorithms to segment anatomy in these images and to derive from the segmented data measurements useful for indexing this image set for characteristics important to researchers in rheumatology, bone morphometry, and related areas. Active Shape Modeling is currently being investigated for use in location and boundary definition for the vertebrae in these images.