title: On the manifold structure of the space of brain images.
abstract: This paper investigates an approach to model the space of brain images through a low-dimensional manifold. A data driven method to learn a manifold from a collections of brain images is proposed. We hypothesize that the space spanned by a set of brain images can be captured, to some approximation, by a low-dimensional manifold, i.e. a parametrization of the set of images. The approach builds on recent advances in manifold learning that allow to uncover nonlinear trends in data. We combine this manifold learning with distance measures between images that capture shape, in order to learn the underlying structure of a database of brain images. The proposed method is generative. New images can be created from the manifold parametrization and existing images can be projected onto the manifold. By measuring projection distance of a held out set of brain images we evaluate the fit of the proposed manifold model to the data and we can compute statistical properties of the data using this manifold structure. We demonstrate this technology on a database of 436 MR brain images.
authors.affiliation: Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, University of Utah, USA. sgerber@cs.utah.edu
authors.forename: Samuel
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gerber
authors.forename: Tolga
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tasdizen
authors.forename: Sarang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Joshi
authors.forename: Ross
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Whitaker
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013382:Subtraction Technique