3-D Active Contour Segmentation Based on Sparse Linear Combination of Training Shapes (SCoTS).

SCoTS captures a sparse representation of shapes in an input image through a linear span of previously delineated shapes in a training repository. The model updates shape prior over level set iterations and captures variabilities in shapes by a sparse combination of the training data. The level set evolution is therefore driven by a data term as well as a term capturing valid prior shapes. During evolution, the shape prior influence is adjusted based on shape reconstruction, with the assigned weight determined from the degree of sparsity of the representation. For the problem of lung nodule segmentation in X-ray CT, SCoTS offers a unified framework, capable of segmenting nodules of all types. Experimental validations are demonstrated on 542 3-D lung nodule images from the LIDC-IDRI database. Despite its generality, SCoTS is competitive with domain specific state of the art methods for lung nodule segmentation.