MR Imaging of Brain Volumes: Evaluation of a Fully Automatic Software

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:Automatic assessment of brain volumes is needed in research and clinical practice. Manual tracing is still the criterion standard but is time-consuming. It is important to validate the automatic tools to avoid the problems of clinical studies drawing conclusions on the basis of brain volumes estimated with methodologic errors. The objective of this study was to evaluate a new commercially available fully automatic software for MR imaging of brain volume assessment. Automatic and expert manual brain volumes were compared.

Automated Determination of Brain Parenchymal Fraction in Multiple Sclerosis

“…The method we chose as reference, QBrain, has previously been validated by using phantoms of known volume 19 and has been used for determination of both ICV and brain parenchymal volume. 18,20 The SyMap results correlated strongly with the manual segmentation results, and the correlation seemed consistent even at lower BPF values. Previous studies indicate that a high degree of atrophy can present a potential problem in automated BPF determination.…”

“…This method has been validated by using phantoms of known volume 19 and has previously been used to determine both ICV and brain parenchymal volume. 18,20 Conventional T2-weighted images were used to determine the ICV, and FLAIR images were used to determine the brain parenchymal volume. All acquisitions had section thicknesses of 2 or 3 mm and an in-plane resolution of 0.43 ϫ 0.43, 0.45 ϫ 0.45, or 0.47 ϫ 0.47 mm.…”

Clinical Feasibility of Synthetic MRI in Multiple Sclerosis: A Diagnostic and Volumetric Validation Study

“…4,5 The quantitative nature of the method and its ability to probe multiple physical properties in a single sequence make it suitable for volumetric analysis. [6][7][8][9][10] Synthetic MR imaging has shown promising initial results for use in MS and patients with an ischemic event. 11,12 The technique is consequently gaining interest as a potentially time-efficient alternative to conventional MR imaging to visualize and quantify brain tissue properties.…”

“…The synthetic MR imaging technique has initially been developed for use on Philips (Best, the Netherlands) and GE Healthcare (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) MR imaging systems, but it is not available for other systems and independent evaluations of the method are scarce. 5,6 The purpose of this study was to implement the synthetic MR imaging technique for use on Siemens (Erlangen, Germany) MR imaging scanners and to compare the diagnostic accuracy of synthetic and conventional images in MS. A secondary aim was to test the repeatability of the volumetric synthetic MR imaging measurements and compare the volumetric results and practicality with other commonly used brain volumetric methods.…”

Assessment of hydrocephalus in children based on digital image processing and analysis

“…There are also some reports about semi-manual segmentation of the CSF using ImageJ (Hiraoka et al, 2010) (i.e., free software for image processing) or manual threshold setting in the Qbrain software (Ambarki et al, 2011). However, in all the above mentioned cases, image segmentation is performed separately (slice-by-slice) and volumetric information contained within the brain scan is ignored.…”