Multiple genetic snakes for bone segmentation

Clinical assessment of skeletal age is a frequent, but yet difficult and time-consuming task. Automatic methods which estimate the skeletal age from a hand radiogram are currently being studied. This work presents a method to segment each bone complex in the radiogram, using a modified active contour approach. Each bone is modelled by an independent contour, while neighbouring contours are coupled by an elastic force. The optimization of the contour is done using a genetic algorithm. Experimental results, carried out on a portion of the whole radiogram, show that coupling of deformable contours with genetic optimization allows to obtain an accurate segmentation.