Whole body MRI intensity standardization

Abstract

A major problem of segmentation of magnetic resonance images is that intensities are not standardized like in computed tomography. This article deals with the correction of inter volume intensity differences that lead to a missing anatomical meaning of the observed gray values. We present a method for MRI intensity standardization of whole body MRI scans. The approach is based on the alignment of a learned reference and the current histogram. Each of these histograms is at least 2-d and represents two or more MRI sequences (e.g., T1- and T2-weighted images). From the matching a non-linear correction function is gained which describes a mapping between the intensity spaces and consequently adapts the image statistics to a known standard. As the proposed intensity standardization is based on the statistics of the data sets only, it is independent from spatial coherences or prior segmentations of the reference and newly acquired images. Furthermore, it is not designed for a particular application, body region or acquisition protocol. The method was evaluated on whole body MRI scans containing data sets acquired by T1/FL2D and T2/TIRM sequences. In order to demonstrate the applicability, examples from noisy and pathological image series acquired on a whole body MRI scanner are given.