Automatic quantitative analysis of lumbar bone radiographs

In the current radiological diagnosis the radiographs often appear as `rough' means to be understood due to the bad quality of radiographic images. The aim of the work is to guarantee a diagnostic support even in presence of radiographic means only, with a little cost increment due to a computer system, by supplying a useful primary screening tool that automatically analyzes digitized radiographs and gives important features relevant from medical standpoint. The specific domain of image analysis concerns the osteoporosis which is a long term diseases requiring an accurate measurement of bone density and a periodic follow-up. The automatic image processing method described in the work goes through a series of steps: selection of the region of interest, first preprocessing, extraction of the vertebral left side, second preprocessing, extraction of upper and lower borders of the end plates, detection of the greatest uniform area inside the vertebral body, third preprocessing, correction of image disuniformity, detection of the end plates, feature detection (variance, mean-gray, concavity, body and tissue density, etc.). The automation of the process is complete and the results good agree with those obtained from human analysis.