Data processing in studying the temporomandibular joint, using MR imaging and sonographic techniques

  • Authors:
  • Ondrej Libeřda;Karel Bartušek;Zdenek Smékal;Jan Mikulka

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, The Faculty Hospital Brno, Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic;Institute of Scientific Instruments, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Brno, Czech Republic;Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication, Brno University of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic;Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication, Brno University of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic

  • Venue:
  • DSP'09 Proceedings of the 16th international conference on Digital Signal Processing
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

The temporomandibular joint is one of the most complicated joints in the human body. Diagnosing its disorders is difficult because the pain is mistakenly taken for toothache, pain in the jaw bones, etc. The paper deals with a post-processing tomographic examination of temporomandibular joint. An interesting post-processing method was used to increase the contrast related to relaxation time T2. Both increasing the contrast and enbancing the arthritic region were realized by processing two MR images in different echo-times. The enhancement rate is realized on the basis of subjective MR image evaluation by the surgeon. Magnetic resonance images (MRIs) are of very low resolution and contrast. An appropriate algorithm has been found, which consists of preprocessing the image by a smoothing filter, focusing, and four-phase level set segmentation. This method segments the image on the basis of the intensity of respective regions and is thus suitable to be applied to the above MR images, in which no sharp edges occur.