A method for morphological characterization of dural ectasia in Marfan syndrome.
In this paper we reported a novel method to detect and quantify dural ectasia in Marfan syndrome. Firstly, the dural sacs of 8 Marfan patients were segmented by applying an unsupervised Fuzzy C-Means method on T2-weighed magnetic resonance images. Then, for each patient a tubular model of the dural sac was extracted by detecting and removing the existent pathological extrusions. The segmented images together with the resulting tube were then rendered using a marching cubes algorithm. The proposed algorithm represents a first attempt to quantify and to morphologically characterize the pathological ectasia that usually accompanies the Marfan disorder. The generated 3D reconstruction and the opportunity to overlap them with a physiological model provides the clinician with a tool for a panoramic view of the structures and a means for a more accurate inspection of ectasia. In addition the extracted parameters furnish quantitative and reproducible measures that could be useful as discriminative indexes for an automatic and more objective diagnosis.
Iacono
Maria I
MI
Biomedical Engineering Department, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy. maria.iacono@mail.polimi.it
Passera
Katia
K
Magrassi
Lorenzo
L
Dore
Roberto
R
Lago
Paolo
P
Arbustini
Eloisa
E
Mainardi
Luca T
LT
D000465:Algorithms; D004108:Dilatation, Pathologic / Q000473:pathology; D004388:Dura Mater / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008382:Marfan Syndrome / Q000473:pathology*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity