Automated Vertebrae Pose Estimation in Low-Radiation Image using Modified Gabor Filter and Ellipse Analysis

Dual-Energy X-ray Absorptiometry Scanner plays an important role in medical diagnosis and clinical routine. Typically, this kind of machine produces two radiography images of human spine consisted of Anteroposterior and Lateral side. However, these two images provided different viewpoints. This paper proposed a method to automatically estimate human vertebrae pose in lateral-side image by using Multi-theta Orientation Gabor Filter combined with Principle Component Analysis and Geometric Ellipse Shape Analysis. The proposed method offered an automated estimation of human lumbar vertebrae pose that can reduce work load of radiologist, computational time and complexity in various bone-clinical applications. The result of the proposed method can help support many applications such as lumbar vertebrae pose segmentation, bone mineral density analysis and vertebral pose deformation. The proposed method can estimate the vertebrae pose with 86.4% for accuracy, 80.5% of recall, precision for 89.11% and 13.6% of false negative rate.