Fuzzy-based extraction of vascular structures from time-of-flight MR images.
In this paper an automatic fuzzy based method for the extraction of the cerebrovascular system from 3D Time-of-Flight (TOF) MRA image sequences is presented. In order to exclude non-brain tissue an automatic skull stripping method is applied in a preprocessing step. Based on the TOF images vesselness and maximum parameter images are computed first. These parameter images are then combined with the TOF sequence using a fuzzy inference. The resulting fuzzy image offers an improved enhancement of small as well as malformed vessels against the remaining brain. Finally, the fuzzy-connectedness approach is used to extract the vascular system. A first evaluation showed that the fuzzy-based method proposed performs better than a state of the art method and yields results in the range of the inter-observer variation.
Forkert
Nils Daniel
ND
Department of Medical Informatics, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, 20246 Hamburg, Germany. n.forkert@uke.uni-hamburg.de
Säring
Dennis
D
Wenzel
Karolin
K
Illies
Till
T
Fiehler
Jens
J
Handels
Heinz
H
D001808:Blood Vessels / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D017143:Fuzzy Logic; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D020521:Stroke / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology