High resolution segmentation of CSF on phase contrast MRI

Abstract

Dynamic velocity-encoded Phase-contrast MRI (PC-MRI) techniques are being used increasingly to quantify pulsatile flows for a variety of flow clinical application. A method for igh resolution segmentation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) velocity is described. The method works on PC-MRI with high temporal and spatial resolution. It has been applied in this paper to the CSF flow at the Aqueduct of Sylvius (AS). The approach first selects the regions with high flow applying a threshold on the coefficient of variation of the image pixels velocity profiles. The AS corresponds to the most central detected region. We perform a lattice independent component analysis (LICA) on this small region, so that the image abundances provide the high resolution segmentation of the CSF flow at the AS. Long term goal of our work is to use this detection and segmentation to take some measurements and evaluate the changes in patients with suspected Idiopathic Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (iNPH). © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.