Fusing Markov Random Fields with Anatomical Knowledge and Shape Based Analysis to Segment Multiple Sclerosis White Matter Lesions in Magnetic Resonance Images of the Brain

This paper proposes an image analysis system to segment multiple sclerosis lesions of magnetic resonance (MR) brain volumes consisting of 3 mm thick slices using three channels (images showing T1-, T2- and PD-weighted contrast). The method uses the statistical model of Markov Random Fields (MRF) both at low and high levels. The neighborhood system used in this MRF is defined in three types: (1) Voxel to voxel: a low-level heterogeneous neighborhood system is used to restore noisy images. (2) Voxel to segment: a fuzzy atlas, which indicates the probability distribution of each tissue type in the brain, is registered elastically with the MRF. It is used by the MRF as a-priori knowledge to correct miss-classified voxels. (3) Segment to segment: Remaining lesion candidates are processed by a feature based classifier that looks at unary and neighborhood information to eliminate more false positives. An expert's manual segmentation was compared with the algorithm