Karen M. Gosche

Document Type

Patent

Publication Date

August 2002

Patent Number

6430430

Abstract

An automated method and/or system for identifying suspected lesions in a brain is provided. A processor (a) provides a magnetic resonance image (MRI) of a patient's head, including a plurality of slices of the patient's head, which MRI comprises a multispectral data set that can be displayed as an image of varying pixel intensities. The processor (b) identifies a brain area within each slice to provide a plurality of masked images of intracranial tissue. The processor (c) applies a segmentation technique to at least one of the masked images to classify the varying pixel intensities into separate groupings, which potentially correspond to different tissue types. The processor (d) refines the initial segmentation into the separate groupings of at least the first masked image obtained from step (c) using one or more knowledge rules that combine pixel intensities with spatial relationships of anatomical structures to locate one or more anatomical regions of the brain. The processor (e) identifies, if present, the one or more anatomical regions of the brain located in step (d) in other masked images obtained from step (c). The processor (f) further refines the resulting knowledge rule-refined images from steps (d) and (e) to locate suspected lesions in the brain.

Application Number

09/561,956

Assignees

University of South Florida

Filing Date

05/01/2000

Primary/U.S. Class

600/410

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