A cooperative framework for segmentation of MRI brain scans

  • Authors:

  • Laurence Germond;Michel Dojat;C Taylor;C Garbay

  • Affiliations:

  • Laboratoire TIMC-IMAG, Institut Bonniot, Faculté de Médecine, Domaine de la Merci, 38706 La Tronche Cedex, France;Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, U438-RMN Bioclinique, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire-Pavillon B, BP 217, 38043 Grenoble Cedex 9, France;Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Manchester, Stopford Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M139PT, UK;Laboratoire TIMC-IMAG, Institut Bonniot, Faculté de Médecine, Domaine de la Merci, 38706 La Tronche Cedex, France

  • Venue:
  • Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
  • Year:
  • 2000

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Abstract

Automatic segmentation of MRI brain scans is a complex task for two main reasons: the large variability of the human brain anatomy, which limits the use of general knowledge and, inherent to MRI acquisition, the artifacts present in the images that are difficult to process. To tackle these difficulties, we propose to mix, in a cooperative framework, several types of information and knowledge provided and used by complementary individual systems: presently, a multi-agent system, a deformable model and an edge detector. The outcome is a cooperative segmentation performed by a set of region and edge agents constrained automatically and dynamically by both, the specific gray levels in the considered image, statistical models of the brain structures and general knowledge about MRI brain scans. Interactions between the individual systems follow three modes of cooperation: integrative, augmentative and confrontational cooperation, combined during the three steps of the segmentation process namely, the specialization of the seeded-region-growing agents, the fusion of heterogeneous information and the retroaction over slices. The described cooperative framework allows the dynamic adaptation of the segmentation process to the own characteristics of each MRI brain scan. Its evaluation using realistic brain phantoms is reported.