title: Fuzzy-based extraction of vascular structures from time-of-flight MR images.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Informatics, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, 20246 Hamburg, Germany. n.forkert@uke.uni-hamburg.de
authors.forename: Nils Daniel
authors.initials: ND
authors.lastname: Forkert
authors.forename: Dennis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Säring
authors.forename: Karolin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wenzel
authors.forename: Till
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Illies
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fiehler
authors.forename: Heinz
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Handels
mesh_terms: 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