Knowledge-based localization of hippocampus in human brain MRI
Hamid Soltanian‐Zadeh, Mohammad-Reza Siadat · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1999
Hippocampus is an important structure of the human brain limbic system. The variations in the volume and architecture of this structure have been related to certain neurological diseases such as schizophrenia and epilepsy. This paper presents a two-stage method for localizing hippocampus in human brain MRI automatically. The first stage utilizes image processing techniques such as nonlinear filtering and histogram analysis to extract information from MRI. This stage generates binary images, locates lateral and third ventricles, and the inferior limit of Sylvian Fissure. The second stage uses a shell of expert system named VP-EXPERT to analyze the information extracted in the first stage. This stage utilizes absolute and relative spatial rules and spatial symmetry rules to locate the hippocampus. The system has been tested using MRI studies of six epilepsy patients. MRI data consisted of a total of 128 images. The system correctly identified all of the slices without hippocampus, and correctly localized hippocampus is about n 78% of the slices with hippocampus.