New multispectral MRI data fusion technique for white matter lesion segmentation: method and comparison with thresholding in FLAIR images

Eur Radiol. 2010 Jul;20(7):1684-91. doi: 10.1007/s00330-010-1718-6. Epub 2010 Feb 16.

Abstract

Objective: Brain tissue segmentation by conventional threshold-based techniques may have limited accuracy and repeatability in older subjects. We present a new multispectral magnetic resonance (MR) image analysis approach for segmenting normal and abnormal brain tissue, including white matter lesions (WMLs).

Methods: We modulated two 1.5T MR sequences in the red/green colour space and calculated the tissue volumes using minimum variance quantisation. We tested it on 14 subjects, mean age 73.3 +/- 10 years, representing the full range of WMLs and atrophy. We compared the results of WML segmentation with those using FLAIR-derived thresholds, examined the effect of sampling location, WML amount and field inhomogeneities, and tested observer reliability and accuracy.

Results: FLAIR-derived thresholds were significantly affected by the location used to derive the threshold (P = 0.0004) and by WML volume (P = 0.0003), and had higher intra-rater variability than the multispectral technique (mean difference +/- SD: 759 +/- 733 versus 69 +/- 326 voxels respectively). The multispectral technique misclassified 16 times fewer WMLs.

Conclusion: Initial testing suggests that the multispectral technique is highly reproducible and accurate with the potential to be applied to routinely collected clinical MRI data.

Publication types

  • Clinical Trial
  • Comparative Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Aged, 80 and over
  • Brain / pathology*
  • Brain Neoplasms / diagnosis
  • Brain Neoplasms / diagnostic imaging*
  • Brain Neoplasms / pathology
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Observer Variation
  • Radiography