Individual 3D region-of-interest atlas of the human brain: knowledge-based class image analysis for extraction of anatomical objects
Gudrun Wagenknecht, Hans-Juergen Kaiser, Osama Sabri, Udalrich Buell · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2000
After neural network-based classification of tissue types, the second step of atlas extraction is knowledge-based class image analysis to get anatomically meaningful objects. Basic algorithms are region growing, mathematical morphology operations, and template matching. A special algorithm was designed for each object. The class label of each voxel and the knowledge about the relative position of anatomical objects to each other and to the sagittal midplane of the brain can be utilized for object extraction. User interaction is only necessary to define starting, mid- and end planes for most object extractions and to determine the number of iterations for erosion and dilation operations. Extraction can be done for the following anatomical brain regions: cerebrum; cerebral hemispheres; cerebellum; brain stem; white matter (e.g., centrum semiovale); gray matter [cortex, frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal lobes, cingulum, insula, basal ganglia (nuclei caudati, putamen, thalami)]. For atlas- based quantification of functional data, anatomical objects can be convoluted with the point spread function of functional data to take into account the different resolutions of morphological and functional modalities. This method allows individual atlas extraction from MRI image data of a patient without the need of warping individual data to an anatomical or statistical MRI brain atlas.