Fuzzy-Based Extraction of Vascular Structures from Time-of-Flight MR Images
Title | Fuzzy-Based Extraction of Vascular Structures from Time-of-Flight MR Images |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2009 |
Authors | Forkert N.D., Säring D., Wenzel K., Illies T., Fiehler J., Handels H. |
Journal | Studies in health technology and informatics |
Volume | 150 |
Pages | 816-20 |
Date Published | 2009 |
Publication Language | eng |
ISSN | 0926-9630 |
Keywords | Blood Vessels, Fuzzy Logic, Humans, Imaging, Three-Dimensional, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Stroke |
Abstract | In this paper an automatic fuzzy based method for the extraction of the cerebrovascular system from 3D Time-of-Flight (TOF) MRA image sequences is presented. In order to exclude non-brain tissue an automatic skull stripping method is applied in a preprocessing step. Based on the TOF images vesselness and maximum parameter images are computed first. These parameter images are then combined with the TOF sequence using a fuzzy inference. The resulting fuzzy image offers an improved enhancement of small as well as malformed vessels against the remaining brain. Finally, the fuzzy-connectedness approach is used to extract the vascular system. A first evaluation showed that the fuzzy-based method proposed performs better than a state of the art method and yields results in the range of the inter-observer variation. |
PubMed Link | |
Alternate Journal | Stud Health Technol Inform |