Abstract

Vertebral compression fractures (VCFs) result in partial collapse of vertebral bodies. They usually are nontraumatic or occur with low-energy trauma in the elderly secondary to different etiologies, such as insufficiency fractures of bone fragility in osteoporosis (benign fractures) or vertebral metastasis (malignant fractures). Our study aims to classify VCFs in T1-weighted magnetic resonance images (MRI).

We used the median sagittal planes of lumbar spine MRIs from 63 patients previously diagnosed with VCFs. The lumbar vertebral bodies were manually segmented and statistical features of gray levels were computed from the histogram. We also extracted texture features and shape features to analyze the contours of the vertebral bodies. In total, 102 lumbar VCFs (53 benign and 49 malignant) and 89 normal lumbar vertebral bodies were analyzed. The k-nearest-neighbor method, a neural network with radial basis functions, and the naïve Bayes classifier were used with feature selection.

The results obtained show an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.97 in distinguishing between normal and fractured vertebral bodies, and an area of 0.92 in discriminating between benign and malignant fractures. The proposed classification methods based on shape, texture, and statistical features have provided high accuracy and may assist in computer-aided diagnosis of VCFs.

Recommended book: Rangaraj M. Rangayyan, “Biomedical Image Analysis,” CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 2005. 1306 pages. www.crcpress.com

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Short Biography

Dr. Rangaraj M. Rangayyan is Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He received the Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering in 1976 from the University of Mysore at the People's Education Society College of Engineering, Mandya, Karnataka, India, and the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Karnataka, India, in 1980. He served the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and the University of Calgary in research, academic, and administrative positions from 1981 to 2016. His research interests are in digital signal and image processing, biomedical signal and image analysis, and computer-aided diagnosis.

Dr. Rangayyan has published more than 160 papers in journals and 270 papers in proceedings of conferences. He has supervised or cosupervised 27 Master's theses, 17 Doctoral theses, and more than 50 researchers at various levels. He has been recognized with the 1997 and 2001 Research Excellence Awards of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the 1997 Research Award of the Faculty of Engineering, by appointment as “University Professor” (2003 to 2013) at the University of Calgary, and with an Outstanding Teaching Performance Award of the Schulich School of Engineering (2016). He is the author of two textbooks: "Biomedical Signal Analysis" (IEEE/ Wiley, 2002, 2015) and "Biomedical Image Analysis" (CRC, 2005). He has coauthored and coedited several other books, including "Color Image Processing with Biomedical Applications" (SPIE, 2011). He has been recognized with the 2013 IEEE Canada Outstanding Engineer Medal, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal (2000), and elected as Fellow, IEEE (2001); Fellow, Engineering Institute of Canada (2002); Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2003); Fellow, SPIE (2003); Fellow, Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (2007); Fellow, Canadian Medical and Biological Engineering Society (2007); Fellow, Canadian Academy of Engineering (2009); and Fellow, Royal Society of Canada (2016).

Dr. Rangayyan's research has been featured in many newsletters, magazines, and newspapers, as well as in several radio and television interviews. He has been invited to present lectures in more than 20 countries and has held Visiting or Honorary Professorships with the University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK; Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland; Universitatea Politehnica Bucureşti, Bucharest, Romania; Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil; Universidade Estadual Paulista, Sorocaba, São Paulo, Brasil; Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH, USA; Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Karnataka, India; Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, West Bengal, India; Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal, Karnataka, India; Amity University, Noida, India; Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China; Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian, China; Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan; University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy; and École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Bretagne, Brest, France. He was an invited lecturer at the prestigious 11th IEEE EMBS International Summer School on Biomedical Imaging, Saint-Jacut de la Mer, Bretagne, France, 2014. He has been recognized as a Distinguished Lecturer by the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), the University of Toronto, and the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers.