Abstract: Accurate segmentation of vertebrae has become more and more important for the diagnosis and treatment of spinal diseases. After studying the change rule of some spinal CT image sequences of normal people, we proposed a new vertebral segmentation algorithm based on vertebral area change regulation. This method first calculates the area of vertebral region in the image after pre-processing, then finds out the significant features for segmentation, uses image similarity of continuous images to select the actual segmentation points, and finally extracts vertebral images from image sequence for 3D reconstruction. The innovation of the method is that a new segmentation algorithm based on the maximum feature and correlation of CT image sequence is proposed. The experimental results show that the algorithm has a good segmentation effect on the CT image sequence of lumbar vertebrae and the lower thoracic vertebrae of normal human bodies and it has a high degree of automation. This study is of great significance to the morphological study of the spine and the simulation of the scoliosis operation.

Key words: computed tomography image sequence, vertebra segmentation, area change regulation, three-dimensional reconstruction