We also demonstrate that partial volume is not perfectly modeled, even though methods that account for mixture classes outperform methods that only consider pure Gaussian classes. Finally, we show that simulated data results can also be extended to real data.Index Terms-Brain tissue models, hidden Markov random fields models, magnetic resonance imaging, partial volume, statistical classification, validation study.

An imaging technique may be helpful in the identification of cerebral penumbra in acute stroke patients and thus in the selection of patients for thrombolytic therapy. Perfusion CT and DWI/PWI are equivalent in this task.

We propose a new exact Euclidean distance transformation (DT) by propagation, using bucket sorting. A fast but approximate DT is first computed using a coarse neighborhood. A sequence of larger neighborhoods is then used to gradually improve this approximation. Computations are kept short by restricting the use of these large neighborhoods to the tile borders in the Voronoi diagram of the image. We assess the computational cost of this new algorithm and show that it is both smaller and less image-dependent than all other DTs recently proposed. Contrary to all other propagation DTs, it appears to remain o(n 2 ) even in the worst-case scenario.

We propose a method for brain atlas deformation in the presence of large space-occupying tumors, based on an a priori model of lesion growth that assumes radial expansion of the lesion from its starting point. Our approach involves three steps. First, an affine registration brings the atlas and the patient into global correspondence. Then, the seeding of a synthetic tumor into the brain atlas provides a template for the lesion. The last step is the deformation of the seeded atlas, combining a method derived from optical flow principles and a model of lesion growth. Results show that a good registration is performed and that the method can be applied to automatic segmentation of structures and substructures in brains with gross deformation, with important medical applications in neurosurgery, radiosurgery, and radiotherapy.

A sound that we hear in a natural setting allows us to identify the sound source and localize it in space. The two aspects can be disrupted independently as shown in a study of 15 patients with focal right-hemispheric lesions. Four patients were normal in sound recognition but severely impaired in sound localization, whereas three other patients had difficulties in recognizing sounds but localized them well. The lesions involved the inferior parietal and frontal cortices, and the superior temporal gyrus in patients with selective sound localization deficit; and the temporal pole and anterior part of the fusiform, inferior and middle temporal gyri in patients with selective recognition deficit. These results suggest separate cortical processing pathways for auditory recognition and localization.

This paper describes a method for registering and visualizing in real-time the results of transcranial magnetic stimulations (TMS) in physical space on the corresponding anatomical locations in MR images of the brain. The method proceeds in three main steps. First, the patient scalp is digitized in physical space with a magnetic-field digitizer, following a specific digitization pattern. Second, a registration process minimizes the mean square distance between those points and a segmented scalp surface extracted from the magnetic resonance image. Following this registration, the physician can follow the change in coil position in real-time through the visualization interface and adjust the coil position to the desired anatomical location. Third, amplitude of motor evoked potentials can be projected onto the segmented brain in order to create functional brain maps. The registration has subpixel accuracy in a study with simulated data, while we obtain a point to surface root-mean-square error of 1.17+/-0.38 mm in a 24 subject study.

In this paper, we present a 3D geometric flow designed to segment the main core of fiber tracts in diffusion tensor magnetic resonance images. The fundamental assumption of our fiber segmentation technique is that adjacent voxels in a tract have similar properties of diffusion. The fiber segmentation is carried out with a front propagation algorithm constructed to fill the whole fiber tract. The front is a 3D surface that evolves with a propagation speed proportional to a measure indicating the similarity of diffusion between the tensors lying on the surface and their neighbors in the direction of propagation. We use a level set implementation to assure a stable and accurate evolution of the surface and to handle changes of topology of the surface during the evolution process. The fiber tract segmentation method does not need a regularized tensor field since the surface is automatically smoothed as it propagates. The smoothing is done by an intrinsic surface force, based on the minimal principal curvature. This segmentation can be used for obtaining quantitative measures of the diffusion in the fiber tracts and it can also be used for white matter registration and for surgical planning.

This paper describes an evaluation framework that allows a standardized and objective quantitative comparison of carotid artery lumen segmentation and stenosis grading algorithms. We describe the data repository comprising 56 multi-center, multi-vendor CTA datasets, their acquisition, the creation of the reference standard and the evaluation measures. This framework has been introduced at the MICCAI 2009 workshop 3D Segmentation in the Clinic: A Grand Challenge III, and we compare the results of eight teams that participated. These results show that automated segmentation of the vessel lumen is possible with a precision that is comparable to manual annotation. The framework is open for new submissions through the website http://cls2009.bigr.nl.