阅读说明：本技术 一种生成脊柱椎间盘定位线的方法及系统 (Method and system for generating spinal disc positioning line ) 是由 钟俊杰 韩劼 于 2021-01-14 设计创作，主要内容包括：本发明公开了一种生成脊柱椎间盘定位线的方法及系统,所述方法包括：获取待处理椎骨对应的局部椎骨图像数据,根据所述局部椎骨图像数据生成目标灰度直方图,并根据所述灰度直方图生成目标阈值范围；根据所述目标阈值范围分割出所述待处理椎骨对应的椎体的图像数据,并基于所述椎体的图像数据获取所述椎体对应的顶点数据；根据所述椎体的顶点数据对脊柱椎间盘进行定位,得到所述脊柱椎间盘的定位线。本发明利用相邻的两个椎体的顶点数据对这两个椎体之间的脊柱椎间盘进行精准定位,继而生成对应的脊柱椎间盘定位线,解决了现有技术中在进行脊柱椎间盘定位时难以准确分割椎体的边缘,导致生成的脊柱椎间盘定位线不准确的问题。(The invention discloses a method and a system for generating a spinal disc positioning line, wherein the method comprises the following steps: acquiring local vertebra image data corresponding to vertebrae to be processed, generating a target gray level histogram according to the local vertebra image data, and generating a target threshold range according to the gray level histogram; segmenting image data of a vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed according to the target threshold range, and acquiring vertex data corresponding to the vertebral body based on the image data of the vertebral body; and positioning the spinal intervertebral disc according to the vertex data of the vertebral body to obtain a positioning line of the spinal intervertebral disc. According to the invention, the spine intervertebral disc between two adjacent vertebral bodies is accurately positioned by using the vertex data of the two vertebral bodies, and then the corresponding spine intervertebral disc positioning line is generated, so that the problem that the generated spine intervertebral disc positioning line is inaccurate due to the fact that the edges of the vertebral bodies are difficult to accurately divide when the spine intervertebral disc is positioned in the prior art is solved.)

1. A method of generating a spinal disc locator line, the method comprising:

acquiring local vertebra image data corresponding to vertebrae to be processed, generating a target gray level histogram according to the local vertebra image data, and generating a target threshold range according to the gray level histogram;

segmenting image data of a vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed according to the target threshold range, and acquiring vertex data corresponding to the vertebral body based on the image data of the vertebral body;

and positioning the spinal intervertebral disc according to the vertex data of the vertebral body to obtain a positioning line of the spinal intervertebral disc.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the obtaining of image data of local vertebrae corresponding to vertebrae to be processed, generating a target gray histogram from the image data of local vertebrae, and generating a target threshold range from the gray histogram comprise:

acquiring original spine image data, and performing unsharp masking pretreatment on the spine image data;

acquiring position information of vertebrae to be processed, and performing cutting operation on the spine image data obtained after preprocessing according to the position information of the vertebrae to be processed to obtain local vertebra image data;

generating a target gray level histogram according to the local vertebra image data;

acquiring a local vertebra gray characteristic curve calculated based on the target gray histogram;

and determining a target threshold range through the local vertebra gray characteristic curve.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the obtaining of the position information of the vertebra to be processed and the performing of the cropping operation on the spine image data obtained after the preprocessing according to the position information of the vertebra to be processed to obtain the local vertebra image data comprises:

when the vertebra to be processed is the first vertebra clicked by a doctor, acquiring position information of the vertebra to be processed generated based on clicking operation of the doctor;

when the vertebrae to be processed are vertebrae except the first vertebra, acquiring two vertex data which are positioned below the first vertebra to be processed in the vertical direction of the human body in the vertex data of the first vertebra to be processed, connecting the two vertex data positioned below, and using position information of a point obtained by connecting a connecting line with a vertical line direction at a downward preset distance as position information of the vertebrae to be processed;

acquiring image category information, and determining a cropping parameter according to the image category information;

and taking the position information of the vertebra to be processed as a center, and performing cutting operation on the spine image data obtained after the preprocessing according to the cutting parameters to obtain local vertebra image data.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein said obtaining a local vertebra gray scale characteristic curve calculated based on said target gray scale histogram comprises:

performing median and mean weighting operation on the target gray level histogram, and taking image data obtained after operation as weighted image data;

and extracting a local vertebra gray characteristic curve according to the weighted image data.

5. The method of generating a spinal disc positioning line of claim 2, wherein said determining a target threshold range from said local vertebra grayscale characteristic curve comprises:

determining an upper limit value and a lower limit value of a target peak in the local vertebra gray characteristic curve;

and taking the upper limit value and the lower limit value as a target threshold range.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein segmenting image data of a vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed according to the target threshold range, and obtaining vertex data of the vertebral body based on the image data of the vertebral body comprises:

performing binarization processing on the local vertebra image data according to the target threshold range, and taking the image data obtained after the processing as binarization image data corresponding to the vertebra to be processed;

performing image segmentation on the binary image data according to the target threshold range, and taking the image data obtained after segmentation as the image data of the vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed;

and performing convolution operation on the image data of the cone by using a specific filter, and obtaining vertex data corresponding to the cone after the convolution is finished.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the image segmentation is performed on the binarized image data according to the target threshold range, and the step of using the image data obtained after the segmentation as the image data of the vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed comprises:

generating seed points according to the position information of the vertebrae to be processed;

merging pixels, of which the similarity with the attribute parameters of the seed points reaches a preset standard, in the binarized image data into the same region by using the target threshold range through a region growing method;

and obtaining image data of the vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed after the combination is finished.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the convolving the image data of the vertebral body with a specific filter to obtain vertex data corresponding to the vertebral body comprises:

carrying out convolution operation on the image data of the vertebral body by using a specific filter, and separating upper edge data and lower edge data of the vertebral body relative to the vertical direction of a human body through the convolution operation;

and generating vertex data corresponding to the vertebral body according to the upper edge data and the lower edge data.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the positioning the spinal disc according to the vertex data of the vertebral body to obtain the positioning line of the spinal disc comprises:

according to the vertex data of the vertebral body and the vertebral body adjacent to the vertebral body, respectively performing median extraction on two vertex data which are positioned on the same side and have the minimum distance value, and taking the two extracted vertex data as two median points;

and connecting the two median points, and using a connecting line obtained after connection as a positioning line of the spinal disc.

10. A system for generating a spinal disc positioning line, the system comprising:

the acquisition module is used for acquiring local vertebra image data corresponding to vertebrae to be processed, generating a target gray histogram according to the local vertebra image data and generating a target threshold range according to the gray histogram;

the segmentation module is used for segmenting image data of a vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed according to the target threshold range and acquiring vertex data corresponding to the vertebral body based on the image data of the vertebral body;

and the positioning module is used for positioning the spinal intervertebral disc according to the vertex data of the vertebral body to obtain a positioning line of the spinal intervertebral disc.

Technical Field

The invention relates to the field of medical image processing, in particular to a system for generating a spinal disc positioning line.

Background

The existing full-automatic spine intervertebral disc scanning positioning line generation algorithm has the problems that due to the nuclear magnetic resonance imaging characteristic, the gray information of an image is changed greatly, so that the threshold value is set inaccurately, and the edge segmentation of a partial cone is inaccurate; secondly, due to the influence of image quality, the correct edges of the diseased spine intervertebral disc and the vertebrae are difficult to accurately segment, so that the positioning line generated at the later stage of the algorithm is inaccurate.

Thus, there is still a need for improvement and development of the prior art.

Disclosure of Invention

The technical problem to be solved by the present invention is to provide a system for generating a spinal disc positioning line, aiming at solving the problem that the generated spinal disc positioning line is inaccurate due to the difficulty in accurately segmenting the edge of the vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra when the spinal disc is positioned in the prior art.

The technical scheme adopted by the invention for solving the problems is as follows:

in a first aspect, the embodiments of the present invention provide a method for generating a spinal disc positioning line, wherein the method includes:

acquiring local vertebra image data corresponding to vertebrae to be processed, generating a target gray level histogram according to the local vertebra image data, and generating a target threshold range according to the gray level histogram;

segmenting image data of a vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed according to the target threshold range, and acquiring vertex data corresponding to the vertebral body based on the image data of the vertebral body;

and positioning the spinal intervertebral disc according to the vertex data of the vertebral body to obtain a positioning line of the spinal intervertebral disc.

In one embodiment, the acquiring local vertebra image data corresponding to a vertebra to be processed, generating a target gray histogram according to the local vertebra image data, and generating a target threshold range according to the gray histogram includes:

acquiring original spine image data, and performing unsharp masking pretreatment on the spine image data;

acquiring position information of vertebrae to be processed, and performing cutting operation on the spine image data obtained after preprocessing according to the position information of the vertebrae to be processed to obtain local vertebra image data;

generating a target gray level histogram according to the local vertebra image data;

acquiring a local vertebra gray characteristic curve calculated based on the target gray histogram;

and determining a target threshold range through the local vertebra gray characteristic curve.

In an embodiment, the obtaining the position information of the vertebra to be processed, and performing a cropping operation on the spine image data obtained after the preprocessing according to the position information of the vertebra to be processed to obtain the local vertebra image data includes:

when the vertebra to be processed is the first vertebra clicked by a doctor, acquiring position information of the vertebra to be processed generated based on clicking operation of the doctor;

when the vertebrae to be processed are vertebrae except the first vertebra, acquiring two vertex data which are positioned below the first vertebra to be processed in the vertical direction of the human body in the vertex data of the first vertebra to be processed, connecting the two vertex data positioned below, and using position information of a point obtained by connecting a connecting line with a vertical line direction at a downward preset distance as position information of the vertebrae to be processed;

acquiring image category information, and determining a cropping parameter according to the image category information;

and taking the position information of the vertebra to be processed as a center, and performing cutting operation on the spine image data obtained after the preprocessing according to the cutting parameters to obtain local vertebra image data.

In one embodiment, the obtaining the local vertebra gray level feature curve calculated based on the target gray level histogram includes:

performing median and mean weighting operation on the target gray level histogram, and taking image data obtained after operation as weighted image data;

and extracting a local vertebra gray characteristic curve according to the weighted image data.

In one embodiment, the determining the target threshold range from the local vertebra grayscale characteristic curve includes:

determining an upper limit value and a lower limit value of a target peak in the local vertebra gray characteristic curve;

and taking the upper limit value and the lower limit value as a target threshold range.

In one embodiment, the segmenting the image data of the vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed according to the target threshold range, and acquiring the vertex data of the vertebral body based on the image data of the vertebral body includes:

performing binarization processing on the local vertebra image data according to the target threshold range, and taking the image data obtained after the processing as binarization image data corresponding to the vertebra to be processed;

performing image segmentation on the binary image data according to the target threshold range, and taking the image data obtained after segmentation as the image data of the vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed;

and performing convolution operation on the image data of the cone by using a specific filter, and obtaining vertex data corresponding to the cone after the convolution is finished.

In an embodiment, the image segmentation of the binarized image data according to the target threshold range, and the taking of the image data obtained after the segmentation as the image data of the vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed includes:

generating seed points according to the position information of the vertebrae to be processed;

merging pixels, of which the similarity with the attribute parameters of the seed points reaches a preset standard, in the binarized image data into the same region by using the target threshold range through a region growing method;

and obtaining image data of the vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed after the combination is finished.

In one embodiment, the performing a convolution operation on the image data of the pyramid by using a specific filter, and obtaining vertex data corresponding to the pyramid after the convolution is completed includes:

carrying out convolution operation on the image data of the vertebral body by using a specific filter, and separating upper edge data and lower edge data of the vertebral body relative to the vertical direction of a human body through the convolution operation;

and generating vertex data corresponding to the vertebral body according to the upper edge data and the lower edge data.

In one embodiment, the positioning the spinal disc according to the vertex data of the vertebral body to obtain the positioning line of the spinal disc comprises:

according to the vertex data of the vertebral body and the vertebral body adjacent to the vertebral body, respectively performing median extraction on two vertex data which are positioned on the same side and have the minimum distance value, and taking the two extracted vertex data as two median points;

and connecting the two median points, and using a connecting line obtained after connection as a positioning line of the spinal disc.

In a second aspect, embodiments of the present invention further provide a system for generating a spinal disc positioning line, wherein the system comprises:

the acquisition module is used for acquiring local vertebra image data corresponding to vertebrae to be processed, generating a target gray histogram according to the local vertebra image data, and generating a target threshold range according to the gray histogram.

The invention has the beneficial effects that: according to the embodiment of the invention, the spine intervertebral disc between two adjacent vertebral bodies is accurately positioned by using the vertex data of the two vertebral bodies, and then the corresponding spine intervertebral disc positioning line is generated, so that the problem that the generated spine intervertebral disc positioning line is inaccurate due to the fact that the edges of the vertebral bodies are difficult to accurately divide when the spine intervertebral disc is positioned in the prior art is solved.

Drawings

In order to more clearly illustrate the embodiments of the present invention or the technical solutions in the prior art, the drawings used in the description of the embodiments or the prior art will be briefly described below, it is obvious that the drawings in the following description are only some embodiments described in the present invention, and for those skilled in the art, other drawings can be obtained according to the drawings without creative efforts.

FIG. 1 is a schematic flow chart of a method for generating a spinal disc location line according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 2 is a histogram of gray scales in an actual local image according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 3 is a vertebral gray scale characteristic curve obtained after smoothing according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 4 is an analysis diagram of gray scale characteristics of an ideal local vertebral image provided by an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 5 is a schematic illustration of the creation of a location line for a spinal disc through four vertices of adjacent vertebral bodies as provided by an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a system for generating a spinal disc alignment line according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed Description

In order to make the objects, technical solutions and advantages of the present invention clearer and clearer, the present invention is further described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and examples. It should be understood that the specific embodiments described herein are merely illustrative of the invention and are not intended to limit the invention.

It should be noted that if directional indications (such as up, down, left, right, front, and back … …) are involved in the embodiment of the present invention, the directional indications are only used to explain the relative positional relationship between the components, the movement situation, and the like in a specific posture, and if the specific posture is changed, the directional indications are changed accordingly.

In the examination of human spine, the pathological changes of spinal intervertebral disc always are the more important concern of doctors. In Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), a physician typically performs a T2-weighted fast Spin-echo sequence scan (FSE sequence) of the scanned spine (e.g., cervical or lumbar). This is because nmr is multi-parameter imaging, and for the convenience of analyzing images, it is desirable that the gray scale of a frame of nmr image be determined primarily by a particular imaging parameter, and that the image be weighted T2 when the gray scale of the image is determined primarily by T2. Weighting is to better display various tissues and lesions in the nuclear magnetic resonance technology, and characteristic parameters of the examined tissues are obtained by adjusting the repetition time of a pulse (the time between a previous pulse sequence and an adjacent next pulse sequence), the echo time (the time between a 90-degree pulse and the peak of an acquired signal) and the like, so as to highlight the images.

Thereafter, the physician needs to manually add the scan location lines of the spinal disc to be scanned from the sagittal scan image. Not only the center point but also the angle needs to be adjusted for the position of the spinal disc during the adding process, which is quite cumbersome and takes the time of the operating physician when many spinal discs are scanned.

The scheme of the existing automatic positioning technology for the spinal intervertebral disc by the nuclear magnetic resonance image is a full-automatic positioning method for the spinal intervertebral disc, which mainly comprises the steps of positioning the spinal cord in an image to obtain the overall trend of the spinal column and generating seed points of vertebrae according to the trend. And (4) segmenting the vertebrae by combining different algorithms according to the seed points of the vertebrae, further obtaining the final position of the spinal disc, and finally obtaining a positioning line.

However, the existing fully-automatic spinal disc scanning positioning line generation algorithm has the following disadvantages:

(1) on the lumbar image, because of the mri characteristics, a process of gradually increasing the brightness of the image from the bottom to the top usually occurs on one image. In addition, the gray information of the image is changed greatly due to different selected weighting modes, so that the difficulty in setting a dynamic threshold is increased, and the situation that the threshold setting is inaccurate and the edge segmentation of partial cones is inaccurate often occurs when the cones are segmented by region growing through the seed points. Although different vertebrae are segmented by calculating corresponding growth thresholds, the threshold needs to be adjusted in a recursive manner continuously to determine whether the segmentation is completed, and the requirements on the area and the shape of the vertebrae are high (close to a rectangle, but the shape of the actual vertebrae or the affected vertebrae is difficult to ensure), even if the segmentation accuracy is ensured, the segmentation is time-consuming.

(2) The method has the advantages that under the influence of image quality, edge information of nuclear magnetic resonance images scanned in a low-field or actual hospital or image quality deviates from images tested in an experiment, the color of spinal intervertebral discs with pathological changes in lumbar images cannot be bright white, the color of the spinal intervertebral discs with pathological changes can be similar to that of vertebrae, if improper edge preprocessing is performed at the moment (or the images are not obviously demarcated with the background due to other conditions during collection), the correct edges of the spinal intervertebral discs with pathological changes and the vertebrae can be difficult or even inaccurate when the vertebral discs and the spinal intervertebral discs are segmented in the later stage, and the positioning line generated in the later stage of the algorithm is easy to be inaccurate. The algorithm itself and the adaptability of different systems can have a great influence.

(3) Because of the algorithm of full-automatic positioning, it is generally required to first locate the spinal cord as an auxiliary line of the vertebra through the image, then fit the positions of all the vertebra seed points in the image through the fluctuation of the threshold value, and then start to perform segmentation. The actual calculation process takes time and is unnecessary for the physician, because it does not examine all the spinal discs in the image, rather than calculating directly from the spinal disc selected by the physician, which is more time-saving and more efficient. When the scanned affected vertebrae or spinal intervertebral discs have certain pathological changes, interference is easily encountered when the seed point fitting analysis is carried out on the whole section of lumbar vertebrae, and finally the generation of the seed points is not accurate.

In short, the existing full-automatic spine intervertebral disc scanning positioning line generation algorithm has the problems that the threshold value is set inaccurately due to the fact that the gray information of an image is changed greatly, and the edge segmentation of a partial cone is inaccurate; secondly, the correct edges of the diseased spine intervertebral disc and the vertebrae are difficult to accurately segment, so that the positioning line generated in the later stage of the algorithm is inaccurate; furthermore, it is necessary to generate the positions of all the vertebral seed points and then start the segmentation, which is time consuming and unnecessary.

Aiming at the defects in the prior art, the invention provides a method for generating a spine intervertebral disc positioning line, which is used for accurately positioning the spine intervertebral disc between two adjacent vertebral bodies by using vertex data of the two vertebral bodies so as to generate the corresponding spine intervertebral disc positioning line, and solves the problem that the generated spine intervertebral disc positioning line is inaccurate because the edges of the vertebral bodies are difficult to accurately partition when the spine intervertebral disc is positioned in the prior art. In addition, the invention does not need to segment all vertebrae in the nuclear magnetic resonance image, and only needs to segment and analyze the image of the specific region clicked by the doctor, thereby reducing the error accumulation and the image processing time of the system.

As shown in FIG. 1, the present embodiment provides a method of generating a spinal disc location line, the method comprising the steps of:

s100, local vertebra image data corresponding to vertebrae to be processed are obtained, a target gray level histogram is generated according to the local vertebra image data, and a target threshold value range is generated according to the gray level histogram.

Specifically, firstly, a physician selects a vertebra to be positioned and analyzed by himself, the system takes the vertebra selected by the physician as a vertebra to be processed, then image data of a local vertebra corresponding to the vertebra to be processed is intercepted, image gray of the image data of the local vertebra is detected and analyzed, the image gray is presented in the form of a gray histogram, the gray histogram generated after the detection and analysis is a target gray histogram corresponding to the vertebra to be processed, then the target gray histogram is calculated and analyzed to obtain a proper gray value range, and the proper gray value range is taken as a target threshold range, so that a vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed is accurately segmented.

In one implementation, the step S100 specifically includes the following steps:

step S110, obtaining original spine image data, and carrying out unsharp masking pretreatment on the spine image data;

step S120, acquiring position information of a vertebra to be processed, and performing cutting operation on the spine image data obtained after preprocessing according to the position information of the vertebra to be processed to obtain local vertebra image data;

step S130, generating a target gray histogram according to the local vertebra image data;

step S140, obtaining a local vertebra gray characteristic curve calculated based on the target gray histogram;

and S150, determining a target threshold range through the local vertebra gray characteristic curve.

Specifically, after the system acquires the original spine image data, it needs to perform unsharp masking preprocessing on the whole spine image data to reduce the influence of noise in the image and enhance the edge information of the vertebral body, so as to facilitate the later segmentation. Then, the position information of the vertebra to be processed needs to be acquired, and the region of the vertebra to be processed in the spine image data is determined based on the position information, so that the spine image data obtained after the preprocessing step can be cut to obtain the local vertebra image data. In one implementation, when the vertebra to be processed is a first vertebra clicked by a physician, acquiring position information of the vertebra to be processed generated based on the clicking operation of the physician; when the vertebrae to be processed are vertebrae except the first vertebra, two vertex data which are positioned below the first vertebra to be processed in the vertical direction of the human body in the vertex data of the first vertebra to be processed are obtained, the two vertex data positioned below are connected, and position information of a point obtained by enabling the vertical line direction of a connecting line obtained after connection to be downward at a preset distance is used as position information of the vertebrae to be processed. And then acquiring image category information, determining a cutting parameter according to the image category information, and performing cutting operation on the spine image data obtained after preprocessing according to the cutting parameter by taking the position information of the vertebra to be processed as a center to obtain local vertebra image data. Briefly, since the position information of the initial vertebra (the first vertebra clicked by the physician) can be directly obtained based on the clicking operation of the physician, assuming that the position information of the initial vertebra is used as the position information of the first seed point, the next seed point corresponds to the next vertebra of the initial vertebra, and the position information of the next seed point can be calculated by taking the slopes of the two end points below the initial vertebra as a reference and calculating a distance downwards in the vertical direction.

For example, after the physician generates a spine image by a pre-designed T2fse sequence scan, the physician selects a cross-sectional scan sequence of the intervertebral disc and enters a normal scan line editing mode. The physician then selects the vertebra to be analyzed, positioned, as the vertebra to be treated. Specifically, in this embodiment, the physician needs to click the head and tail vertebrae of the intervertebral disc to be segmented, and the physician can continuously select a plurality of intervertebral discs, and only needs to click the first vertebra on the initial intervertebral disc and the next vertebra behind the last intervertebral disc, so as to generate the positioning line corresponding to the intervertebral disc. The system can directly confirm the position of the starting vertebra (the first vertebra clicked by the doctor) through the clicked position of the doctor, and calculate the positions of other vertebrae. In addition, the system needs to acquire user-input image category information, which is used to indicate which category of cervical, thoracic and lumbar vertebrae the current spine image belongs to, and spine images of different categories have different cropping parameters, such as cropping proportion, range and the like, due to different sizes of vertebrae.

After obtaining the local vertebra image data, it is also necessary to generate a target gray histogram (as shown in fig. 2) according to the local vertebra image. The gray histogram refers to a function of an image with respect to gray level distribution, and is a statistic of the gray level distribution in the image. Specifically, the gray histogram is obtained by counting the frequency of occurrence of all pixels in the digital image according to the size of the gray value. In other words, a gray histogram represents the number of pixels in an image having a certain gray level, reflecting the frequency of occurrence of a certain gray level in an image. Therefore, after the target gray level histogram is generated, the target gray level histogram is analyzed, and the local vertebra gray level characteristic curve corresponding to the vertebra to be processed can be drawn.

In one implementation, the specific method for generating the local vertebra grayscale characteristic curve is as follows: firstly, performing median and mean weighting operation on the target gray level histogram, taking image data obtained after the operation as weighted image data, and then extracting a local vertebra gray level characteristic curve according to the weighted image data. Specifically, the gray histogram is weighted by a plurality of proportional changes of the median and the mean with specific window width data to smooth the curve and enlarge the feature points, so as to obtain a local vertebra gray characteristic curve (as shown in fig. 3).

And then determining a target threshold range adopted in subsequent image binarization processing and image segmentation according to the local vertebra drawing characteristic curve. In one implementation, the upper limit value and the lower limit value of a target peak in the local vertebra grayscale characteristic curve may be determined as a target threshold range. Specifically, the inventor obtains an ideal local vertebra gray characteristic curve (as shown in fig. 4) through induction after a plurality of experiments, and then, by combining medical characteristics of the T2 weighted image and image gray characteristic analysis, it can be known that a first peak a mainly includes a darker portion in the local vertebral body image, i.e., a gray value portion (dark background) outside the vertebra and on the left side and on a part of the intervertebral disc, a second higher peak B in the middle mainly includes a portion where the gray value of the vertebra is located, gray values of a peak C of a subsequent protrusion generally correspond to a portion (light background) where the intervertebral disc, the spinal cord and other fat signals are lighter, and a D region mainly includes a region where the spinal cord signal and a part of the noise are particularly lighter. Therefore, in this embodiment, it is required to precisely locate the peak B (usually, the second peak) where the vertebra is located, take the peak B as the target peak, and then locate the upper limit value and the lower limit value of the target peak, so as to take the peak B as the target threshold range.

After the target threshold range is determined, as shown in fig. 1, the method further includes the following steps:

and S200, segmenting image data of a vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed according to the target threshold range, and acquiring vertex data corresponding to the vertebral body based on the image data of the vertebral body.

Specifically, the intervertebral disc of the human body refers to a cartilage connecting structure located between adjacent vertebrae, so that the vertebral bodies corresponding to the vertebrae specified by the physician need to be accurately segmented, and then the vertexes corresponding to the vertebral bodies are determined, so that the accurate positioning of the spinal intervertebral disc can be finally realized and the corresponding positioning line is generated.

In one implementation, the step S200 specifically includes the following steps:

step S210, performing binarization processing on the local vertebra image data according to the target threshold range, and taking the image data obtained after the processing as binarization image data corresponding to the vertebra to be processed;

s220, performing image segmentation on the binary image data according to the target threshold range, and taking the image data obtained after segmentation as the image data of the vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed;

and step S230, performing convolution operation on the image data of the vertebral body by using a specific filter, and obtaining vertex data corresponding to the vertebra after the convolution is finished.

In this embodiment, binarization processing needs to be performed on the local vertebra image data according to the target threshold range, and the image data obtained after the processing is completed is used as the binarization image data corresponding to the vertebra to be processed. Specifically, the image binarization is a process of setting the gray value of a pixel point on an image to be 0 or 255 based on a preset threshold value, that is, the whole image has an obvious black-and-white effect, so that the data volume in the image can be greatly reduced, and the outline of a target can be highlighted. In this embodiment, when performing image binarization, a threshold value is not used, but a threshold value range is used, that is, the target threshold value range obtained in the foregoing steps in this embodiment, pixels whose grayscale values are within the target threshold value range are determined to belong to a specific object, and the grayscale values of the pixels are represented by 255, otherwise, the pixels are excluded from the object area, and the grayscale values are 0, which represent the background or an exceptional object area.

And after generating the binary image data, carrying out image segmentation on the binary image data according to the target threshold range, and taking the image data obtained after segmentation as the image data of the vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed. In one implementation manner, seed points may be generated according to the position information of the vertebra to be processed, then pixels in the binarized image data, the similarity of which with the attribute parameters of the seed points reaches a preset standard, are merged into the same region by using the target threshold range through a region growing method, and image data of a vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed is obtained after merging is completed.

Specifically, after a target threshold range is obtained, corresponding seed points are generated according to the position of the vertebra to be processed, and then image data of a vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed is segmented by using the target threshold range and a region growing method. The region growing method is to merge pixels with similar attributes adjacent to the seed point into the same region from the set seed point, where the attribute of the seed point in this embodiment may include a gray value or texture information. Since the determination criterion of the region growing in this embodiment is based on the gray value, and the gray values of the vertebra parts in the T2-weighted nmr image are relatively close to each other, the region growing is performed by using the target threshold range as a standard, so that the foreground image data of the vertebra corresponding to the vertebra to be processed can be obtained, the foreground image data may have noise to cause a void in the middle or an uneven edge, and at this time, the image processing operations such as hole filling, morphological erosion and expansion can be performed on the foreground image data, so as to obtain the image data of the complete vertebra.

Then, a specific filter is needed to perform convolution operation on the image data of the cone body so as to obtain vertex data corresponding to the cone body. Specifically, a convolution operation is first performed on the image data of the vertebral body by using a specific filter, upper edge data and lower edge data of the vertebral body relative to the vertical direction of the human body are separated through the convolution operation, and then vertex data corresponding to the vertebral body is generated according to the upper edge data and the lower edge data. For example, after the image data of the vertebral body is obtained, the image data of the vertebral body may be convolved by using a horizontal edge filter or an oblique diagonal filter according to the rotation condition of the vertebral body, and the upper and lower edges of the vertebral body relative to the vertical direction of the human body are separated, so as to segment four vertexes of the vertebral body. Finally, to achieve positioning of the spinal disc, as shown in fig. 1, the method further comprises the steps of:

and S300, positioning the spinal intervertebral disc according to the vertex data of the vertebral body to obtain a positioning line of the spinal intervertebral disc.

It can be understood that after the vertex data of the vertebral body is obtained, the two vertexes of the upper edge of the vertebral body correspond to the vertexes of the lower edge of the intervertebral disc above the vertebral body, and conversely, the two vertexes of the lower edge of the vertebral body correspond to the vertexes of the upper edge of the intervertebral disc right below the vertebral body. Therefore, after the vertex data of the vertebral body is obtained, the spinal disc can be accurately positioned according to the vertex data of the vertebral body, and a positioning line of the spinal disc is further generated.

In an implementation method, the step S300 specifically includes the following steps:

step S310, according to the vertex data of the vertebral body and the vertebral body adjacent to the vertebral body, respectively performing median extraction on two vertex data which are positioned on the same side and have the smallest distance value, and taking the two extracted points as two median points;

and S320, connecting the two median points, and using a connecting line obtained after connection as a positioning line of the spinal disc.

Specifically, in this embodiment, a positioning line of the spinal disc can be generated only by segmenting image data of at least two adjacent vertebral bodies and obtaining vertex data corresponding to the two adjacent vertebral bodies. For example, assuming that four vertexes A, B, C, D of the vertebral body corresponding to the first vertebra and four vertexes a, b, C, D of the vertebral body corresponding to the second vertebra are obtained, as shown in fig. 5, two median points e and f are obtained by performing median extraction on the vertex C and the vertex a and performing median extraction on the vertex D and the vertex b, and a connecting line is obtained by connecting the vertex C and the vertex a and connecting the vertex D and the vertex b, and the connecting line is the positioning line of the spinal disc between the first vertebra and the second vertebra.

Based on the above embodiments, the present invention further provides a system for generating a spinal disc positioning line, as shown in fig. 6, the system comprising:

the acquisition module 01 is used for acquiring local vertebra image data corresponding to vertebrae to be processed, generating a target gray histogram according to the local vertebra image data, and generating a target threshold range according to the gray histogram;

the segmentation module 02 is used for segmenting the image data of the vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed according to the target threshold range and acquiring vertex data corresponding to the vertebral body based on the image data of the vertebral body;

and the positioning module 03 is used for positioning the spinal intervertebral disc according to the vertex data of the vertebral body to obtain a positioning line of the spinal intervertebral disc.

In view of the above, the present invention discloses a method of generating a spinal disc location line, the method comprising: acquiring local vertebra image data corresponding to vertebrae to be processed, generating a target gray level histogram according to the local vertebra image data, and generating a target threshold range according to the gray level histogram; segmenting image data of a vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra to be processed according to the target threshold range, and acquiring vertex data corresponding to the vertebral body based on the image data of the vertebral body; and positioning the spinal intervertebral disc according to the vertex data of the vertebral body to obtain a positioning line of the spinal intervertebral disc. According to the invention, the spine intervertebral disc between two adjacent vertebral bodies is accurately positioned by using the vertex data of the two vertebral bodies, and then the corresponding spine intervertebral disc positioning line is generated, so that the problem that the generated spine intervertebral disc positioning line is inaccurate due to the fact that the edge of the vertebral body corresponding to the vertebra is difficult to accurately cut when the spine intervertebral disc is positioned in the prior art is solved. In addition, the invention does not need to segment all intervertebral discs in the nuclear magnetic resonance image, only needs to analyze the specific region clicked by the doctor, reduces the error accumulation and reduces the image processing time of the system.

It is to be understood that the invention is not limited to the examples described above, but that modifications and variations may be effected thereto by those of ordinary skill in the art in light of the foregoing description, and that all such modifications and variations are intended to be within the scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.