Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
J. C. Ferrie
CHU of Poitiers
Unite IRM, Scanner
BP 577,86021 Poitiers cedex, France
ABSTRACT
This paper presents a multiple resolution algorithm for the
segmentationof three-dimensionalmagneticresonance (MR)
images. The algorithmconsists in the unsupervised segmentation of the MR volume into regions of different statistical behavior. Firstly, an unsupervised merging algorithm
estimates a block segmentation of the volume while determining the region number and the parameters of those regions. This estimation is computed by minimizing a global
information criterion. Next, the small regions are eliminated using statistic criteria. Finally, the segmentation is performed using the neighboring relationships between voxels
via Hidden Markov Random Fields and a Multiple Resolution Iterated Conditional Mode algorithm. Some results on
volumetric brain MR images are presented and discuted.
1. INTRODUCTION
Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging is commonly used
for anatomical observations of brain and the diagnostic and
treatment of brain diseases. Particularly, observations of pathological regions and measurements of the tumoral response (volume, degree of necrosis) have a p a t influence on the
choice of therapies. Thus, segmentation of MR images into
different tissues, i.e. gray matter, white matter, cerebrospinal fluid, tumors or ecchymosis, is a prerequired step.
Many unsupervised segmentation techniques have been
studying in the literature [l]. In [2], Bouman proposed an
unsupervised method for segmentation of two-dimensional
textured images into regions of different statisticalbehavior.
Each region is characterized by its mean, its variance and
a stochastic parameter model for second order stationary
random fields. This algorithm is based on the unsupervised
block estimation of the number of regions and their different parameters by minimizing a global Information Criterion (IC). Multiple Resolution Iterated Conditional Mode
(MR-ICM) algorithm is used to estimate the final segmentation. Moreover, neighboring informations between pixels
are introduced in the model via a Hidden Markov R a d o m
Fields (HMRF).
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rithm.
In the second step, we estimate the segmented field by a
maximumaposrerion(MAP) estimation. Lets define y the
observation, Y its associated random field and z a realization of the segmented random field X . Then the segmented
field d given the model 0is:
2 - 4 4 . 4 ~= argmax{P(X
z
3. PARAMETER ESTIMATION
= z(Y = y)}
(1)
ven
We supposed that the distribution of the MR volume giis a Gaussian mixture model defined by [5]:
c
,.
P ( Y = yl0) =
a&(Y = y p i )
(2)
i= I
P(Y = 2/10) =
l-I C a i p i ( Y s= Ysl0a)
SES
( *
i=l
(3)
As Bouman [ 2 ] ,we chose to firstly divide the MR volume into M blocks of equal size. The lattice S is then composed of a partition set { A , + }of A4 blocks fork = 1 , . .. , M.
We assume that each block Ak , IC = 1, . . . A4, corresponds
to one unique class. The mean and the variance of each class
is respectively estimated as the empirical mean and the empirical variance. Moreover, we assume that each block is independent. Thus, the initial apriori probability of any class
is equal to l/M. It should be notice that this is not equivalent to assume that each block is an independent random
variable. However, the resulting distribution is still a multinomial distribution, parametrized by the npriori probability
of each block.
Thanks to these hypothesis, we have at our disposal an
initial block estimation of the mixture model 0 . Then, the
is estimated by blocks merging during the
block model
IC minimization stage. In the end of the article, we uses the
notation 0 for the mixture model.
~
lo48
I G ( m ) = -2logP(YI@)
+ C+,(n).p
(4)
where
q$pkM-qgfp.
However, the estimation of the mixture model by minimizing I C ( m ) is still substantially difficult. Bouman proposed to use the modified criterion :
I6")
+ c,, (n).p
(5)
c,.
(77~).
= 7k?-l - 1,
<En},
(6)
where E, is the deletion threshold and R is ordered in increasing values of a b . The class elimination is made by matching and merging each class of R with one class of r. Let
c
k be a class to be eliminatedand cl its matching class. The
merging of c k with cl is the one which penalizes the less
the quality of the estimated model. Thus, c ( k ,I) verifies:
(7)
1. the estimation of
&?
The estimation of Om is an iterative process which successively minimizes IC' (m)by three distinct procedures.During the estimation of one of the parameters, the others are
supposed to be fixed. Let j be a particular step of the prccess. The three procedures are then:
IC'
~={Ck,vk=1,"',7?LlCkk
kfl
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The number of classes I% obtained after the first estimation step ranges from 15 to 35 which leads to an oversementation of the volume. Thus. the class deletion steD is
neiessary. D+g this step, the number of classes is re!uced
to 7 with 7n E [5,9]for E,, =
and 6 = 2% of IC (7R).
The figure. a) shows two slices of a
volume.
We add on these slices the frontiersbetween the main brain
structures. These frontiers were manually drawn by an expert. The figure (1- b) represents the corresponding slices
segmented with our algorithm. Seven regions were found.
As we can see, the regions are consistent with the frontiers.
The figure. (1- c) represents the slices segmented with FCM
algorithm. We notice that, thanks to the Markovian regularization, the classes obtained with our algorithm are less
scattered than the ones obtained by the fuzzy one. Moreover, our algorithm manages to differentiate the tumor from
the white matter whereas these regions are merge together
with the FCM algorithm.
&
[6] H. Akaike, Informationtheory and an extension of the maximum likelihood principle, Second Int. Symposium on Inforrnation Theory, pp. 267-291, 1973.
171 G. s c h w a , Estimating the dimension of a model, Ann.
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2000.
5. CONCLUSION
- a - original slices
6. REFERENCES
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imagerie p a r resonance magnetique tridimentionnelle, Ph.D.
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