Pituitary adenoma volumetry with 3D Slicer

PLoS One. 2012;7(12):e51788. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051788. Epub 2012 Dec 11.

Abstract

In this study, we present pituitary adenoma volumetry using the free and open source medical image computing platform for biomedical research: (3D) Slicer. Volumetric changes in cerebral pathologies like pituitary adenomas are a critical factor in treatment decisions by physicians and in general the volume is acquired manually. Therefore, manual slice-by-slice segmentations in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, which have been obtained at regular intervals, are performed. In contrast to this manual time consuming slice-by-slice segmentation process Slicer is an alternative which can be significantly faster and less user intensive. In this contribution, we compare pure manual segmentations of ten pituitary adenomas with semi-automatic segmentations under Slicer. Thus, physicians drew the boundaries completely manually on a slice-by-slice basis and performed a Slicer-enhanced segmentation using the competitive region-growing based module of Slicer named GrowCut. Results showed that the time and user effort required for GrowCut-based segmentations were on average about thirty percent less than the pure manual segmentations. Furthermore, we calculated the Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) between the manual and the Slicer-based segmentations to proof that the two are comparable yielding an average DSC of 81.97±3.39%.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Humans
  • Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / methods
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional / methods*
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods*
  • Pituitary Neoplasms* / diagnostic imaging
  • Pituitary Neoplasms* / physiopathology
  • Radiography
  • Tumor Burden