Adaptive filtering for enhancement of the osteocyte cell network in 3D microtomography images

The osteocyte cell network in bone tissue is thought to orchestrate tissue adaptation and remodeling, thus holding responsibility for tissue quality. Previously, this structure has been studied mainly in 2D and its architecture and functions are not fully elucidated. The assessment of the osteocyte system is prerequisite for deeper understanding of bone remodeling and for advances in management of bone diseases. Our goal is to enable 3D isotropic imaging of bone at cellular level and to develop algorithms for quantitative image analysis of the cell network. We recently demonstrated accurate 3D imaging of this cell structure with synchrotron radiation tomography at submicrometric scale. Due to the limited spatial resolution of the imaging system and the constraints in terms of radiation dose, the images suffer from low signal to noise ratio and the detection of the cell dendrites is challenging. Here we detail a method for enhancement of the osteocyte network in human bone from 3D microtomography images. The approach combines Hessian-based 3D line enhancement and bilateral filtering. Our method enables extraction of the interconnected cells from noisy images, preserving the integrity of the cells and of their slender dendrites. Qualitative and quantitative results are presented.

[1]  Jürgen Weese,et al.  Multi-scale line segmentation with automatic estimation of width, contrast and tangential direction in 2D and 3D medical images , 1997, CVRMed.

[2]  Alexandra Pacureanu,et al.  Nanoscale imaging of the bone cell network with synchrotron X-ray tomography: optimization of acquisition setup. , 2012, Medical physics.

[3]  Guido Gerig,et al.  Three-dimensional multi-scale line filter for segmentation and visualization of curvilinear structures in medical images , 1998, Medical Image Anal..

[4]  Marcel Breeuwer,et al.  Evaluation of Hessian-based filters to enhance the axis of coronary arteries in CT images , 2003, CARS.

[5]  P. Cloetens,et al.  X-Ray Phase Nanotomography Resolves the 3D Human Bone Ultrastructure , 2012, PloS one.

[6]  Teruko Takano-Yamamoto,et al.  Three-dimensional reconstruction of chick calvarial osteocytes and their cell processes using confocal microscopy. , 2005, Bone.

[7]  Alejandro F. Frangi,et al.  Muliscale Vessel Enhancement Filtering , 1998, MICCAI.

[8]  L. Bonewald,et al.  The Amazing Osteocyte , 2010, Journal of bone and mineral research : the official journal of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.

[9]  Philipp Schneider,et al.  Towards quantitative 3D imaging of the osteocyte lacuno-canalicular network. , 2010, Bone.

[10]  Roberto Manduchi,et al.  Bilateral filtering for gray and color images , 1998, Sixth International Conference on Computer Vision (IEEE Cat. No.98CH36271).

[11]  Minqi Li,et al.  A histological assessment on the distribution of the osteocytic lacunar canalicular system using silver staining , 2007, Journal of Bone and Mineral Metabolism.

[12]  Isabelle Bloch,et al.  A review of 3D vessel lumen segmentation techniques: Models, features and extraction schemes , 2009, Medical Image Anal..

[13]  P Cloetens,et al.  A synchrotron radiation microtomography system for the analysis of trabecular bone samples. , 1999, Medical physics.

[14]  Christine Toumoulin,et al.  Coronary vein tracking from MSCT using a minimum cost path approach , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro.