International Journal of applied mathematics and computer science

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Paper details

Number 2 - June 2014
Volume 24 - 2014

Assessment of hydrocephalus in children based on digital image processing and analysis

Anna Fabijańska, Tomasz Węgliński, Krzysztof Zakrzewski, Emilia Nowosławska

Abstract
Hydrocephalus is a pathological condition of the central nervous system which often affects neonates and young children. It manifests itself as an abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid within the ventricular system of the brain with its subsequent progression. One of the most important diagnostic methods of identifying hydrocephalus is Computer Tomography (CT). The enlarged ventricular system is clearly visible on CT scans. However, the assessment of the disease progress usually relies on the radiologist’s judgment and manual measurements, which are subjective, cumbersome and have limited accuracy. Therefore, this paper regards the problem of semi-automatic assessment of hydrocephalus using image processing and analysis algorithms. In particular, automated determination of popular indices of the disease progress is considered. Algorithms for the detection, semi-automatic segmentation and numerical description of the lesion are proposed. Specifically, the disease progress is determined using shape analysis algorithms. Numerical results provided by the introduced methods are presented and compared with those calculated manually by a radiologist and a trained operator. The comparison proves the correctness of the introduced approach.

Keywords
hydrocephalus, computed tomography, image segmentation, Evans index, frontal and occipital horn ratio, ventricular angle, frontal horn radius

DOI
10.2478/amcs-2014-0022