Bone image segmentation

Characteristics of microscopic structures in bone cross sections tarry esse ntial clues in age determination in forensic science and in the study of ag e-related bone developments and bone diseases. Analysis of bone cross secti ons represents a major area of research in bone biology. However, tradition al approaches in bone biology have relied primarily on manual processes wit h very limited number of bone samples. As a consequence, it is difficult to reach reliable and consistent conclusions, Tn this paper we present an ima ge processing system that uses microstructural and relational knowledge pre sent in the bone cross section for bone image segmentation, This system aut omates the bone image analysis process and is able to produce reliable resu lts based on quantitative measurements from a large number of bone images. As a result, using large databases of bone images to study the correlation between bone structural features and age-related bone developments becomes feasible.