Automatic segmentation, internal classification, and follow-up of optic pathway gliomas in MRI

作者：Weizman L^*; Ben Sira L; Joskowicz L; Constantini S; Precel R; Shofty B; Ben Bashat D

来源：Medical Image Analysis, 2012, 16(1): 177-188.

DOI：10.1016/j.media.2011.07.001

• Multi-sequence MRI
• Brain tumor
• Segmentation
• Optic pathway glioma
• Neurofibromatosis

This paper presents an automatic method for the segmentation, internal classification and follow-up of optic pathway gliomas (OPGs) from multi-sequence MRI datasets. Our method starts with the automatic localization of the OPG and its core with an anatomical atlas followed by a binary voxel classification with a probabilistic tissue model whose parameters are estimated from the MR images. The method effectively incorporates prior location, tissue characteristics, and intensity information for the delineation of the OPG boundaries in a consistent and repeatable manner. Internal classification of the segmented OPG volume is then obtained with a robust method that overcomes grey-level differences between learning and testing datasets. Experimental results on 25 datasets yield a mean surface distance error of 0.73 mm as compared to manual segmentation by experienced radiologists. Our method exhibits reliable performance in OPG growth follow-up MR studies, which are crucial for monitoring disease progression. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first method that addresses automatic segmentation, internal classification, and follow-up of OPG.

• 出版日期2012-1