Objectives: An automatic segmentation method is presented for PET images based on an iterative approximation by threshold value that includes the influence of both lesion size and background present during the acquisition.
Material and methods: Optimal threshold values that represent a correct segmentation of volumes were determined based on a PET phantom study that contained different sizes spheres and different known radiation environments. These optimal values were normalized to background and adjusted by regression techniques to a two-variable function: lesion volume and signal-to-background ratio (SBR). This adjustment function was used to build an iterative segmentation method and then, based in this mention, a procedure of automatic delineation was proposed. This procedure was validated on phantom images and its viability was confirmed by retrospectively applying it on two oncology patients.
Results: The resulting adjustment function obtained had a linear dependence with the SBR and was inversely proportional and negative with the volume. During the validation of the proposed method, it was found that the volume deviations respect to its real value and CT volume were below 10% and 9%, respectively, except for lesions with a volume below 0.6 ml.
Conclusions: The automatic segmentation method proposed can be applied in clinical practice to tumor radiotherapy treatment planning in a simple and reliable way with a precision close to the resolution of PET images.
Keywords: Contorneo del volumen tumoral; Iterative method; Método iterativo; PET; Segmentación; Segmentation; Target volume delineation; Thresholding; Umbral.
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