Chest wall segmentation in automated 3D breast ultrasound using rib shadow enhancement and multi-plane cumulative probability enhanced map

We propose an automatic segmentation method of chest wall in 3D ABUS images using rib shadow enhancement and multi-planar cumulative probability enhanced map. For the identification of individual dark rib shadows, each rib shadow is enhanced using intensity transfer function and 3D sheet-like enhancement filtering. Then, wrongly enhanced intercostal regions and small fatty tissues are removed using coronal and sagittal cumulative probability enhanced maps. The large fatty tissues with globular and sheet-like shapes at the top of rib shadow are removed using shape and orientation analysis based on moment matrix. Detected chest walls are connected with cubic B-spline interpolation. Experimental results show that the Dice similarity coefficient of proposed method as comparison with two manually outlining results provides over 90% in average.