Incorporating prior knowledge in medical image segmentation: a survey

TL;DR

This survey reviews optimization-based medical image segmentation methods that incorporate prior knowledge, highlighting their types, formulation domains, and optimization techniques, and introduces an interactive database for researchers.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of prior knowledge integration methods in segmentation and introduces an interactive online database for ongoing research updates.

Findings

Different types of prior knowledge are used in segmentation frameworks.

Optimization techniques vary between global and local methods.

The survey discusses design aspects and future challenges in the field.

Abstract

Medical image segmentation, the task of partitioning an image into meaningful parts, is an important step toward automating medical image analysis and is at the crux of a variety of medical imaging applications, such as computer aided diagnosis, therapy planning and delivery, and computer aided interventions. However, the existence of noise, low contrast and objects' complexity in medical images are critical obstacles that stand in the way of achieving an ideal segmentation system. Incorporating prior knowledge into image segmentation algorithms has proven useful for obtaining more accurate and plausible results. This paper surveys the different types of prior knowledge that have been utilized in different segmentation frameworks. We focus our survey on optimization-based methods that incorporate prior information into their frameworks. We review and compare these methods in terms of the types of prior employed, the domain of formulation (continuous vs. discrete), and the optimization techniques (global vs. local). We also created an interactive online database of existing works and categorized them based on the type of prior knowledge they use. Our website is interactive so that researchers can contribute to keep the database up to date. We conclude the survey by discussing different aspects of designing an energy functional for image segmentation, open problems, and future perspectives.