Fuzzy Multi-channel Clustering with Individualized Spatial Priors for Segmenting Brain Lesions and Infarcts

Overview & Synopsis

Quantitative analysis of brain lesions and ischemic infarcts is becoming very important due to their association with cardiovascular disease and normal aging. In this paper, we present a semi-supervised segmentation methodology that detects and classifies cerebrovascular disease in multi-channel magnetic resonance (MR) images. The method combines intensity based fuzzy c-means (FCM) segmentation with spatial probability maps calculated from a normative set of images from healthy individuals. Unlike common FCM-based methods which segment only healthy tissue, we have extended the fuzzy segmentation to include patient-specific spatial priors for both pathological conditions (lesions and infarcts). These priors are calculated by estimating the statistical voxel-wise variation of the healthy anatomy, and identifying abnormalities as deviations from normality. False detection is reduced by knowledge-based rules. Assessment on a population of 47 patients from different imaging sites illustrates the potential of the proposed method in segmenting both hyperintense lesions and necrotic infarcts.