Abstract
In the context of the challenge of “automatic InterVertebral Disc (IVD) localization and segmentation from 3D multi-modality MR images” that took place at MICCAI 2018, we have proposed a segmentation method based on simple image processing operators. Most of these operators come from the mathematical morphology framework. Driven by some prior knowledge on IVDs (basic information about their shape and the distance between them), and on their contrast in the different modalities, we were able to segment correctly almost every IVD. The most interesting feature of our method is to rely on the morphological structure called the Three of Shapes, which is another way to represent the image contents. This structure arranges all the connected components of an image obtained by thresholding into a tree, where each node represents a particular region. Such structure is actually powerful and versatile for pattern recognition tasks in medical imaging.