Results of the empirical multi-atlas segmentation of the thyroid. The quantitative results (A) show that NLS provides significant improvement in terms of the DSC, Hausdorff distance, and mean surface distance, with a 3 × 3 × 3 patch neighborhood as the most consistent performer. The qualitative results (B) support the quantitative improvement and demonstrate that NLS provides substantial improvement in shape, boundary, and point-wise surface distance error. Note that “Subject Type 1” underwent a surgery to surgically bisect the thyroid.