Preserving Anatomical Continuity: Three-Stage Pipeline for Colon Segmentation in 3D Abdominal CT Scans

arXiv:2610.03467v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Accurate colon segmentation from CT images is essential for colorectal disease analysis, yet deep learning based methods often produce disconnected predictions due to complex anatomy. This study introduces a three-stage, topology-preserving segmentation pipeline to address this issue. The first stage performs initial deep learning-based segmentation, followed by centreline bridging to reconnect disjoint regions and a reconstruction stage to refine continuity. Evaluations on TotalSegmentator and RAOS datasets using overlap, distance and topology-based metrics demonstrate improved structural consistency while maintaining segmentation accuracy. The proposed method enhances topological integrity, enabling more reliable colon segmentation for clinical and research applications.