A novel method is presented to automatically extract the midsagittal plane (MSP) from volumetric MR images. The MSP which generally approximates the interhemispheric fissure is the plane separating both hemispheres. It is meaningful for the brain segmentation, registration, quantification and pathology detection especially in Talairach space. The algorithm works based on the theory of the symmetry principal axis, the local searching method and minimizing the local symmetry coefficient. The proposed algorithm is validated on 20 T2-weighted MR data sets, which indicates that a clear MSP image can be extracted in the presence of relatively bigger distance error or angular deviation. This fully automatic algorithm is potentially useful in the clinical application and for research.

Date Published: 30 October 2009
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 7497, MIPPR 2009: Medical Imaging, Parallel Processing of Images, and Optimization Techniques, 74971W (30 October 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.832508

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7497:
MIPPR 2009: Medical Imaging, Parallel Processing of Images, and Optimization Techniques
Faxiong Zhang; Faxiong Zhang, Editor(s)