title: Removal of extracerebral tissues in dual-echo magnetic resonance images via linear scale-space features.
abstract: The location and masking of the brain and surrounding cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in two-dimensional (2D) dual-echo fast spin-echo (FSE) magnetic resonance (MR) images of the head is achieved by an automated procedure with a voxel-based computational algorithm. Linear scale-space features are derived from the short-echo, proton-density (PD)-weighted images. The second-order Gaussian derivative (the Laplacian) operator is applied at three different spatial scales as a measure of image convexity/concavity with a first-order Gaussian derivative measure (the squared gradient) at a single scale used to circumscribe cortical regions. A mask obtained from the long-echo, T2-weighted image is used to remove extracerebral components of the visual system. A three-dimensional (3D) connectivity analysis then identifies the largest connected volume as the brain. Five dual-echo fast spin-echo images acquired by repeated scanning of the same normal volunteer were used to verify reproducibility; and coronal and axial acquisitions from another normal volunteer to demonstrate the method's robustness to data collected with non-cubic voxels. Images acquired from five individuals with Alzheimer's disease are also presented to show that the algorithm can be used in cases of non-normative anatomy. Validity is affirmed by demonstrating that cerebral volumes estimated by this method for all 12 images are highly correlated (R = 0.98) with estimates obtained by an expert human operator.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Care of the Elderly, King's College School Medicine and Dentistry, London, UK. j.suckling@iop.bpmf.ac.uk
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Suckling
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Brammer
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lingford-Hughes
authors.forename: E T
authors.initials: ET
authors.lastname: Bullmore
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000473:pathology; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results