Setting up Reference Templates

The SAMS pipeline requires a set of CT images and their respective segmented 3D mandible models as the reference templates. These templates are the CT image (template scan) that the test scan will be mapped on to during the image registration process. Their respective 3D mandible models are the deformable models used to create the automatically-segmented mandibles for each registration. The following sections showed steps the VTLab implemented to build the reference templates needed for this pipeline.

Template Selection

The 54 reference templates (27 Males, 27 Females) we selected consisted of typically-developing individuals from birth to age of 20 years old. Each of the reference templates have the following components prepared and pre-processed:

1. CT Image (Referred to as Template Scan in the rest of this documentation)

2. 3D Mandible Model (Referred to as Template Model in the rest of this documentation)

This set of reference templates can be altered according to user preferences and research goals. Parameters presented in this documentation were optimized based on this set of reference templates. The user should perform parameter optimization to allow for best-performance of the reference templates built. Refer to Basic Workflow section for details of parameters set for this pipeline.

Template Preparation Process

The template scans are first processed through a cycle of registration pipeline with their 3D mandible models (that are segmented manually prior) as the deformable models, generating a set of automatically-segmented mandible models for each of the template scan. The segmented mandible models are then post-processed for enhancement and eventually used as the final template models in the SAMS pipeline.