| A new 3D reconstruction technique of the two adjacent structures forming the hip joint from the 3D CT-scans images has been developed. The femoral head and the acetabulum are reconstructed using a 3D multi-structure segmentation method for the adjacent surfaces which is based on the use of a 3D triangular surface meshes. This method begins with a preliminary hierarchical segmentation of the two structures, using one triangular mesh for each structure. The two resulting 3D meshes of the hierarchical segmentation are deployed into two planar 2D surfaces. We have used the umbrella deployment to deploy the femoral head mesh, and the parameterization 3D/2D to deploy the acetabulum mesh. The two planar generated surfaces are used to deploy the CT-scan volume around each structure. The surface of each structure is nearly planar in the corresponding deployed volume. The iterative method of minimal surfaces ensures the optimal identification of both sought surfaces from the deployed volumes. The last step of the 3D reconstruction method aims at detecting and correcting the overlap between the two structures. This 3D reconstruction method has been validated using a data base of 10 3D CT-scan images.;The results of the 3D reconstructions seem satisfactory. The precision errors of these 3D reconstructions have been quantified by comparing the 3D reconstructions with an available manual gold standard. The errors resulting from the quantification are better than those available in the literature; the mean of those errors is 0,83 +/- 0,25 mm for acetabulum and 0,70 +/- 0,17 mm for the femoral head. The mean execution time of the 3D reconstruction of the two structures forming the hip joint has been estimated at approximately 3,0 +/- 0,3 min . The proposed method shows the potential of the solution which the image processing can provide to the surgeons in order to achieve their routine tasks. Such a method can be applied to every imaging modality. |
