Fundamental Technologies of Computational Anatomy—Construction and utilization of structural statistical atlas and statistical surgical atlas—

Abstract

Overview of the project of "Fundamental Technologies on Computational Anatomy", which is conducted by one of planned research groups of The "Computational Anatomy" project, MEXT, Japan, is described. The computational anatomy research field is aiming at the development of mathematical models to deal with inter-subject anatomical variability derived from the patient image database. In a broader sense, it is aiming at complete anatomical identification of medical images and optimization of diagnosis and therapy based on statistical evidence obtained from the patient database. In this article, we describe our approaches to construction and utilization of structural statistical atlas for modeling multiple interrelated anatomical structures and statistical surgical atlas for modeling surgical cases and surgeon's expertise.