SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATED SEGMENTATION, CHARACTERIZATION, AND CLASSIFICATION OF POSSIBLY MALIGNANT LESIONS AND STRATIFICATION OF MALIGNANT TUMORS

摘要

A method and apparatus for classifying possibly malignant lesions from sets of DCE-MRI images includes receiving a set of MRI slice images obtained at respectively different times, where each slice image includes voxels representative of at least one region of interest (ROI). The images are processed to determine the boundaries of the ROIs and the voxels within the identified boundaries in corresponding regions of the images from each time period are processed to extract kinetic texture features. The kinetic texture features are then used in a classification process which classifies the ROIs as malignant or benign. The malignant lesions are further classified to separate TN lesions from non-TN lesions.