Towards automatic segmentation of MS lesions in PD/T2 MR images

M. Stella Atkins; Mark S. Drew; Zinovi Tauber

doi:10.1117/12.387743

6 June 2000 Towards automatic segmentation of MS lesions in PD/T2 MR images

M. Stella Atkins, Mark S. Drew, Zinovi Tauber

Proceedings Volume 3979, Medical Imaging 2000: Image Processing; (2000) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.387743
Event: Medical Imaging 2000, 2000, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

Recognizing that conspicuous multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions have high intensities in both dual-echo T2 and PD-weighted MR brain images, we show that it is possible to automatically determine a thresholding mechanism to locate conspicuous lesion pixels and also to identify pixels that suffer from reduced intensity due to partial volume effects. To do so, we first transform a T2-PD feature space via a log(T2)- log(T2+PD) remapping. In the feature space, we note that each MR slice, and in fact the whole brain, is approximately transformed into a line structure. Pixels high in both T2 and PD, corresponding to candidate conspicuous lesion pixels, also fall near this line. Therefore we first preprocess images to achieve RF-correction, isolation of the brain, and rescaling of image pixels into the range 0 - 255. Then, following remapping to log space, we find the main linear structure in feature space using a robust estimator that discounts outliers. We first extract the larger conspicuous lesions which do not show partial volume effects by performing a second robust regression for 1D distances along the line. The robust estimator concomitantly produces a threshold for outliers, which we identify with conspicuous lesion pixels in the high region. Finally, we perform a third regression on the conspicuous lesion pixels alone, producing a 2D conspicuous lesion line and confidence interval band. This band can be projected back into the adjacent, non-conspicuous, region to identify tissue pixels which have been subjected to the partial volume effect.

Citation Download Citation

M. Stella Atkins, Mark S. Drew, and Zinovi Tauber "Towards automatic segmentation of MS lesions in PD/T2 MR images", Proc. SPIE 3979, Medical Imaging 2000: Image Processing, (6 June 2000); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.387743

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