Automatic segmentation of cerebral hemispheres in MR human head scans

摘要

Automatic segmentation of cerebral hemispheres in magnetic resonance (MR) brain images help to quantify the brain asymmetry and correct several MR brain deformities. The detection of mid-sagittal plane (MSP) in human brain image is necessary to segment the hemispheres for both operator-based and automated brain image asymmetric analysis. In this article, a computationally simple and accurate technique to detect MSP in MRI human head scans using curve fitting is developed. The left and right hemispheres are segmented based on the detected MSP. The accuracy of the MSP is evaluated by comparing the segmented left and right hemispheres against the manually segmented ones. Experimental results using 78 volumes of T1, T2 and PD-weighted MRI brain images show that the proposed method has accurately segmented the cerebral hemispheres based on the detected MSP in axial and coronal orientations of normal and pathological brain images.