Deformable Head Atlas of Chinese Adults Incorporating Inter-Subject Anatomical Variations

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 6; pp. 51392 - 51400
• Main Authors: Chen, Zhaofeng, Qiu, Tianshuang, Huo, Li, Yu, Lijuan, Shi, Hongcheng, Zhang, Yanjun, Wang, Hongkai
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.01.2018; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Adults; Anatomy; Computed tomography; Deformable models; digital human head atlases; Formability; Head; Health services; Image segmentation; Magnetic heads; Medical imaging; Model accuracy; personalized anatomy modeling; Population (statistical); Shape; statistical shape model; Training
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2869331

To date, many digital atlases of the human head have been developed, but few incorporate the anatomical variations of the population. In this paper, for the first time, we constructed two digital head atlases (DHAs) of Chinese male and female adults, which can be deformed to simulate the inter-subject anatomical variations. The atlases were developed to assist with personalized medical treatment, population-based radio magnetic simulation, and medical imaging device design. The statistical shape model approach was used to construct the atlases based on a training set of 65 computed tomography (CT) images (including those of 46 males and 19 females). To evaluate the accuracy of anatomy modeling, we compared the atlas morphometry parameters with the reference values of the Chinese population and observed the reasonable agreement between them. Compared with the existing digital human head atlases, a unique feature of the DHA is the capability of emulating individual head anatomy via model deformation. This feature is validated by registering the DHAs to patient CT images. The registered atlases provide complete anatomy of the target subjects, including the structures that are not clearly visible in the CT images.