A Thinning-based Liver Vessel Skeletonization Method

In the clinical practice of diagnosis and treatment of liver disease, how to effectively represent and analyze the vascular structure has been a widely studied topic for a long time. In this paper, we propose a method for the three dimensional skeletal graph generation of liver vessels using 3D thinning algorithm and graph theory. First of all, the principal methods for skeletonization are introduced, followed by their comparative analysis. Secondly, the 3D thinning-based skeletonization method together with a filling hole pre-processing on liver vessel image are employed to form the liver skeleton. A graph-based technique is then employed on the skeleton image to efficiently form the liver vascular graph. The thinning-based liver vessel skeletonization method was evaluated on liver vessel images with other two kinds of skeletonization approaches to show its effectiveness and efficiency.