Semi-automated color segmentation of anatomical tissue

We propose a semi-automated region-based color segmentation algorithm to ex tract anatomical structures, including soft tissues, in the color anatomy s lices of the Visible Human data. Our approach is based on repeatedly dividi ng an image into regions using Voronoi diagrams and classifying the regions based on experimental classification statistics. The user has the option o f reclassifying regions in order to improve the final boundary. Our results indicate that the algorithm can find accurate outlines in a small number o f iterations and that manual interaction can markedly improve the outline. This approach can be extended to 3D color segmentation. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.