METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR FULLY AUTOMATED SEGMENTATION OF JOINT USING PATIENT-SPECIFIC OPTIMAL THRESHOLDING AND WATERSHED ALGORITHM

Disclosed are a method and apparatus for fully automatically segmenting a joint based on a patient-specific optimal thresholding method and a watershed algorithm. The method of fully automatically segmenting an image may include the steps of extracting region information corresponding to a target object to be segmented from a medical image of the target object by associating a thresholding method and a load path algorithm, generating a first mask MASK 1 based on the extracted region information, generating a morphological patch by performing morphological subdivision on the medical image based on a watershed algorithm, generating a second mask MASK 2 based on the generated morphological patch, and segmenting an image corresponding to the target object from the medical image based on the first mask and the second mask.