Computer Based Quantification of Osteoporosis and Bone Alignment
Funded by the Austrian National Bank Anniversary Fund
Team: René Donner, Erich Birngruber, Peter Widhalm, Philipp Peloschek, Georg Langs
Osteoporosis is an increasing problem for the Western world´s aging population. In Europe, 40% of women and 20% of men are, by the age of 80, expected to have suffered from an osteoporotic spine. Radiographic findings indicating osteopenia and osteoporosis are requently encountered in daily radiological practiceand to make the most of the screening potential of radiography vertebral fractures have to be reported precisely.
Measurement of lower limb alignment is important in orthopedic radiology, especially for the planning of total knee arthroplasty. The goals of the project are to develop and evaluate fully automated methods to assess the extent and progression of osteoporotic spinal fractures and the dimension of axial mal-alignment of the lower limb. Fully automated methods, as described here, perform certain circumscribed actions (i.e. measurements) without intermediate interaction on the image by the user. This automated digital morphometry is expected to increase the sensitivity of osteoporotic fracture screening and to allow for precise fracture follow-up. The quantification of mal-alignment benefits from an accurate and consistent localization of anatomical landmarks by model based approaches, measurements will be performed almost instantly, and the radiologist can focus on other relevant findings earlier.
Recent publications
- R. Donner, H. Wildenauer, H. Bischof, G. Langs. Generalized Sparse MRF Appearance Models. in Image and Vision Computing 2010
- N. Fakhrai, P. Widhalm, C. Chiari, M. Weber, G. Langs, R. Donner, H. Ringl, M. Jantsch, and P. Peloschek. Automatic assessment of the knee alignment angle on full-limb radiographs. Eur J Radiol, Mar 2009.
- Peter Widhalm, Georg Langs, René Donner, Negar Fakhrai, Philipp Peloschek, Robert Sablatnig. Estimation of Fit Confidence in Active Shape Model Search for the Reliable Measurement of Knee Alignment in Proc. of AAPR'08, 2008
- Rene Donner, Branislav Micusik, Georg Langs, Horst Bischof. Sparse MRF Appearance Models for Fast Anatomical Structure Localisation [download pdf] in Proceedings of BMVC 07, 2007 Best Scientific Paper Prize