Dental cyst delineation using live wire algorithm

This paper presents a segmentation algorithm for interactive delineation of various types of dental cysts using Livewire, which is slightly modified from classical Live wire algorithm to segment dental X-ray images. The aim of this paper is to segment regions of dental cysts. It is necessary to choose suitable segmentation method because of adverse parameters of the regions. The regions of the cysts are of low contrast and the pixel intensity distribution is not homogenous, hence the semiautomatic live-wire method was chosen. Live-wire segmentation is an interactive tool for efficient, accurate boundary extraction which requires minimal user input with a mouse. This algorithm calculates the local cost [1] and then applies modified shortest path algorithm for better results. This approach to image segmentation is faster and more accurate than manual segmentation. It is very good compromise between simple manual edge tracing and automatic methods such as thresholding, watershed segmentation or other methods whose results must be post-processed.