Brain MRI Segmentation with Multiphase Minimal Partitioning: A Comparative Study

This paper presents the implementation and quantitative evaluation of a multiphase three-dimensional deformable model in a level set framework for automated segmentation of brain MRIs. The segmentation algorithm performs an optimal partitioning of three-dimensional data based on homogeneity measures that naturally evolves to the extraction of different tissue types in the brain. Random seed initialization was used to minimize the sensitivity of the method to initial conditions while avoiding the need for a priori information. This random initialization ensures robustness of the method with respect to the initialization and the minimization set up. Postprocessing corrections with morphological operators were applied to refine the details of the global segmentation method. A clinical study was performed on a database of 10 adult brain MRI volumes to compare the level set segmentation to three other methods: “idealized” intensity thresholding, fuzzy connectedness, and an expectation maximization classification using hidden Markov random fields. Quantitative evaluation of segmentation accuracy was performed with comparison to manual segmentation computing true positive and false positive volume fractions. A statistical comparison of the segmentation methods was performed through a Wilcoxon analysis of these error rates and results showed very high quality and stability of the multiphase three-dimensional level set method

Transfer learning improves supervised image segmentation across imaging protocols

The variation between images obtained with different scanners or different imaging protocols presents a major challenge in automatic segmentation of biomedical images. This variation especially hampers the application of otherwise successful supervised-learning techniques which, in order to perform well, often require a large amount of labeled training data that is exactly representative of the target data. We therefore propose to use transfer learning for image segmentation. Transfer-learning techniques can cope with differences in distributions between training and target data, and therefore may improve performance over supervised learning for segmentation across scanners and scan protocols. We present four transfer classifiers that can train a classification scheme with only a small amount of representative training data, in addition to a larger amount of other training data with slightly different characteristics. The performance of the four transfer classifiers was compared to that of standard supervised classification on two magnetic resonance imaging brain-segmentation tasks with multi-site data: white matter, gray matter, and cerebrospinal fluid segmentation; and white-matter-/MS-lesion segmentation. The experiments showed that when there is only a small amount of representative training data available, transfer learning can greatly outperform common supervised-learning approaches, minimizing classification errors by up to 60%

Bayesian segmentation of brainstem structures in MRI

VK: Lampinen, J.In this paper we present a method to segment four brainstem structures (midbrain, pons, medulla oblongata and superior cerebellar peduncle) from 3D brain MRI scans. The segmentation method relies on a probabilistic atlas of the brainstem and its neighboring brain structures. To build the atlas, we combined a dataset of 39 scans with already existing manual delineations of the whole brainstem and a dataset of 10 scans in which the brainstem structures were manually labeled with a protocol that was specifically designed for this study. The resulting atlas can be used in a Bayesian framework to segment the brainstem structures in novel scans. Thanks to the generative nature of the scheme, the segmentation method is robust to changes in MRI contrast or acquisition hardware. Using cross validation, we show that the algorithm can segment the structures in previously unseen T1 and FLAIR scans with great accuracy (mean error under 1 mm) and robustness (no failures in 383 scans including 168 AD cases). We also indirectly evaluate the algorithm with a experiment in which we study the atrophy of the brainstem in aging. The results show that, when used simultaneously, the volumes of the midbrain, pons and medulla are significantly more predictive of age than the volume of the entire brainstem, estimated as their sum. The results also demonstrate that the method can detect atrophy patterns in the brainstem structures that have been previously described in the literature. Finally, we demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is able to detect differential effects of AD on the brainstem structures. The method will be implemented as part of the popular neuroimaging package FreeSurfer.Peer reviewe

Computerized Analysis of Magnetic Resonance Images to Study Cerebral Anatomy in Developing Neonates

The study of cerebral anatomy in developing neonates is of great importance for the understanding of brain development during the early period of life. This dissertation therefore focuses on three challenges in the modelling of cerebral anatomy in neonates during brain development. The methods that have been developed all use Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) as source data. To facilitate study of vascular development in the neonatal period, a set of image analysis algorithms are developed to automatically extract and model cerebral vessel trees. The whole process consists of cerebral vessel tracking from automatically placed seed points, vessel tree generation, and vasculature registration and matching. These algorithms have been tested on clinical Time-of- Flight (TOF) MR angiographic datasets. To facilitate study of the neonatal cortex a complete cerebral cortex segmentation and reconstruction pipeline has been developed. Segmentation of the neonatal cortex is not effectively done by existing algorithms designed for the adult brain because the contrast between grey and white matter is reversed. This causes pixels containing tissue mixtures to be incorrectly labelled by conventional methods. The neonatal cortical segmentation method that has been developed is based on a novel expectation-maximization (EM) method with explicit correction for mislabelled partial volume voxels. Based on the resulting cortical segmentation, an implicit surface evolution technique is adopted for the reconstruction of the cortex in neonates. The performance of the method is investigated by performing a detailed landmark study. To facilitate study of cortical development, a cortical surface registration algorithm for aligning the cortical surface is developed. The method first inflates extracted cortical surfaces and then performs a non-rigid surface registration using free-form deformations (FFDs) to remove residual alignment. Validation experiments using data labelled by an expert observer demonstrate that the method can capture local changes and follow the growth of specific sulcus

An Information Theoretic Approach For Feature Selection And Segmentation In Posterior Fossa Tumors

Posterior Fossa (PF) is a type of brain tumor located in or near brain stem and cerebellum. About 55% - 70 % pediatric brain tumors arise in the posterior fossa, compared with only 15% - 20% of adult tumors. For segmenting PF tumors we should have features to study the characteristics of tumors. In literature, different types of texture features such as Fractal Dimension (FD) and Multifractional Brownian Motion (mBm) have been exploited for measuring randomness associated with brain and tumor tissues structures, and the varying appearance of tissues in magnetic resonance images (MRI). For selecting best features techniques such as neural network and boosting methods have been exploited. However, neural network cannot descirbe about the properties of texture features. We explore methods such as information theroetic methods which can perform feature selection based on properties of texture features. The primary contribution of this dissertation is investigating efficacy of different image features such as intensity, fractal texture, and level - set shape in segmentation of PF tumor for pediatric patients. We explore effectiveness of using four different feature selection and three different segmentation techniques respectively to discriminate tumor regions from normal tissue in multimodal brain MRI. Our research suggest that Kullback - Leibler Divergence (KLD) measure for feature ranking and selection and Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm for feature fusion and tumor segmentation offer the best performance for the patient data in this study. To improve segmentation accuracy, we need to consider abnormalities such as cyst, edema and necrosis which surround tumors. In this work, we exploit features which describe properties of cyst and technique which can be used to segment it. To achieve this goal, we extend the two class KLD techniques to multiclass feature selection techniques, so that we can effectively select features for tumor, cyst and non tumor tissues. We compute segemntation accuracy by computing number of pixels segemented to total number of pixels for the best features. For automated process we integrate the inhomoheneity correction, feature selection using KLD and segmentation in an integrated EM framework. To validate results we have used similarity coefficients for computing the robustness of segmented tumor and cyst

White matter volume assessment in premature infants on MRI at term - computer aided volume analysis

The objective of this study is the development of an automatic segmentation framework for measuring volume changes in the white matter tissue from premature infant MRI data. The early stage of the brain development presents several major computational challenges such as structure and shape variations between patients. Furthermore, a high water content is present in the brain tissue, that leads to inconsistencies and overlapping intensity values across different brain structures. Another problem lies in low-frequency multiplicative intensity variations, which arises from an inhomogeneous magnetic field during the MRI acquisition. Finally, the segmentation is influenced by the partial volume effects which describe voxels that are generated by more than one tissue type. To overcome these challenges, this study is divided into three parts with the intention to locally segment the white matter tissue without the guidance of an atlas. Firstly, a novel brain extraction method is proposed with the aim to remove all non-brain tissue. The data quality can be improved by noise reduction using an anisotropic diffusion filter and intensity variations adjustments throughout the volume. In order to minimise the influence of missing contours and overlapping intensity values between brain and nonbrain tissue, a brain mask is created and applied during the extraction of the brain tissue. Secondly, the low-frequency intensity inhomogeneities are addressed by calculating the bias field which can be separated and corrected using low pass filtering. Finally, the segmentation process is performed by combining probabilistic clustering with classification algorithms. In order to achieve the final segmentation, the algorithm starts with a pre-segmentation procedure which was applied to reduce the intensity inhomogeneities within the white matter tissue. The key element in the segmentation process is the classification of diffused and missing contours as well as the partial volume voxels by performing a voxel reclassification scheme. The white matter segmentation framework was tested using the Dice Similarity Metric, and the numerical evaluation demonstrated precise segmentation results