Title: Intelligent Deformable Organisms: An Artificial Life Approach to Medical Image Analysis Authors: Ghassan Hamarneh 1,2 , Tim McInerney 3,2 , and Demetri Terzopoulos 4,2 1 Department of Signals and Systems, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, SE-41296, Sweden. ghassan@s2.chalmers.se, http://www.s2.chalmers.se 2 Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, M5S 3H5, Canada. {ghassan, dt, tim}@cs.toronto.edu, http://www.cs.toronto.edu 3 School of Computer Science, Ryerson University, Toronto, M5B 2K3, Canada. tmcinern@scs.ryerson.ca, http://www.scs.ryerson.ca 4 Media Research Laboratory, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA. dt@cs.nyu.edu, http://www.mrl.nyu.edu Abstract: We propose and demonstrate a new paradigm for medical image analysis that borrows concepts from the field of artificial life. The paradigm prescribes intelligent agents in the form of artificial organisms whose primary objective is the proper segmentation and analysis of anatomical structures in medical images. An organism’s ‘awareness’ of the segmentation process guides it to identify landmark anatomical features during its development. The organism possesses a ‘brain’ enabling it to make decisions and issue ‘muscle’ actuation commands, resulting in shape deformations of its body, comprising skeleton and limbs. Behavioral decisions are based upon perceived data, memorized information, and a pre-stored ‘cognitive’ plan. The underlying medial-based representation of the organism’s bodily shape facilitates a variety of controlled deformations at multiple scales and locations. Our framework promises to lay the foundation for the construction of robust and automatic medical image analysis tools by combining deformable models and high-level a priori knowledge. We show how an intelligent corpus callosum agent, which takes the form of a worm, can deal with noise, incomplete edges, enormous anatomical variation, and occlusion in order to segment and label the corpus callosum in 2D mid-sagittal MRI slices of the brain. Animations: a) Segmenting the Corpus Callosum (CC) with an Intelligent CC Creature, and b) Controlled Shape Deformations via Medial-Based Shape Profiles animations can be found at: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ghassan/AL_MIA/miccai.htm