Automatic Method to Segment the Liver on Multi-Phase MRI

The detection and characterization of hepatic lesions is fundamental in clinical practice, from the diagnosis stages to the evolution of the therapeutic response. Magnetic resonance is a usual practice in the localization and quantification of hepatic lesions [1]. Multi-phase automatic segmentation of the liver is illustrated in T1 weighted images. This task is necessary for detecting the lesions. The proposed liver segmentation is based on 3D anisotropic diffusion processing without any control parameter. Combinations of edge detection techniques, histogram analysis, morphological post-processing and evolution of an active contour have been applied to the liver segmentation. The active contour evolution is based on the minimization of variances in luminance between the liver and its closest neighborhood