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Preamble
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Software, hardware and results generated from testing the performance of a bone segmentation algorithm
implemented in both hardware and software for segmenting bone in medical
images.

The bone segmentation algorithm used was one described by Haas et al.
(doi: 10.1088/0031-9155/53/6/017). The algorithm was implemented in full in
software. Details of this implementation can be obtained from the following 
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15129/1a667dbc-8202-443d-a52b-45b5f8b498d2.
A simplified version of this algorithm for processing image volumes with high 
noise content was developed for hardware implementation, which was implemented
in both hardware and software. 

The software algorithms were executed on a 2.6GHz Intel Core i5-3230M CPU,
while the hardware system was implemented on a Xilinx Zynq Z7020 device on an
AvNet ZedBoard development board.

Image data in the form of 4-dimensional computed tomography (4DCT) scans of a 
Modus Medical QUASAR Programmable Respiratory Motion Phantom (Modus Medical 
Devices Inc. London, ON) were obtained from Edinburgh Cancer Centre (n=8) and
used as the input data. Each of the datasets contained fifteen 3D image volumes
that were each segmented.

The time taken to process each image volume and each slice of each image volume
was recorded for each of the three implementations.

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Inventory
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    input_data.zip: contains a description of the image data used as input to
                    generate the results in the results directory. The image
                    data itself is not included as it was obtained from 
                    Edinburgh Cancer Centre under terms prohibiting its further
                    sharing.

    results.zip:    contains the times taken to process each dataset for each 
	                of the three implementations.
					
	sw.zip:         contains some of the C++ source code used to generate the  
                    software results for comparison with the performance of 
                    the hardware system
					
	vivado.zip:     contains a TCL script to recreate the hardware system used
                    to produce this data using Xilinx Vivado v.2017.2; also 
                    contains the software application run on that system to
                    produce this data