title: Component analysis approach to estimation of tissue intensity distributions of 3D images.
abstract: Many segmentation algorithms in medical imaging rely on accurate modeling and estimation of tissue intensity probability density functions. Gaussian mixture modeling, currently the most common approach, has several drawbacks, such as reliance on a Gaussian model and iterative local optimization used to estimate the model parameters. It also does not take advantage of substantially larger amount of data provided by 3D acquisitions, which are becoming standard in clinical environment. We propose a novel and completely non-parametric algorithm to estimate the tissue intensity probabilities in 3D images. Instead of relying on traditional framework of iterating between classification and estimation, we pose the problem as an instance of a blind source separation problem, where the unknown distributions are treated as sources and histograms of image subvolumes as mixtures. The new approach performed well on synthetic data and real magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the brain, robustly capturing intensity distributions of even small image structures and partial volume voxels.
authors.affiliation: School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798 Singapore.
authors.forename: Vitali
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Zagorodnov
authors.forename: Arridhana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ciptadi
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008954:Models, Biological; D008959:Models, Neurological; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D016008:Statistical Distributions