title: Computer-based assessment for facioscapulohumeral dystrophy diagnosis.
abstract: The paper presents a computer-based assessment for facioscapulohumeral dystrophy (FSHD) diagnosis through characterisation of the fat and oedema percentages in the muscle region. A novel multi-slice method for the muscle-region segmentation in the T1-weighted magnetic resonance images is proposed using principles of the live-wire technique to find the path representing the muscle-region border. For this purpose, an exponential cost function is used that incorporates the edge information obtained after applying the edge-enhancement algorithm formerly designed for the fingerprint enhancement. The difference between the automatic segmentation and manual segmentation performed by a medical specialists is characterised using the Zijdenbos similarity index, indicating a high accuracy of the proposed method. Finally, the fat and oedema are quantified from the muscle region in the T1-weighted and T2-STIR magnetic resonance images, respectively, using the fuzzy c-mean clustering approach for 10 FSHD patients.
authors.affiliation: Institute "Jožef Stefan", Jamova cesta 39, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. Electronic address: olga.chambers@ijs.si.
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Chambers
authors.affiliation: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Tržaška cesta 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia; Faculty of Medicine, Vražov trg 2, 1000 Ljubljana,Slovenia.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Milenković
authors.affiliation: University Medical Centre of Ljubljana, Department of Neurology, Zaloška cesta 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pražnikar
authors.affiliation: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Tržaška cesta 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
authors.forename: J F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Tasič
mesh_terms: D000273:Adipose Tissue / Q000473:pathology; D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D001331:Automation; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007866:Leg / Q000473:pathology; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009132:Muscles / Q000473:pathology; D020391:Muscular Dystrophy, Facioscapulohumeral / Q000175:diagnosis*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012984:Software
keywords: FSHD; Hyperintensity quantification; MRI; Muscle dystrophy; Muscle-region segmentation