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Towards discrimination of infarcts from artifacts in DWI scans

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International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Objective

Accurate and rapid quantification of infarcts from DWI scans is critical in acute ischemic stroke. Acquisition artifacts lead to hyperintense regions in DWI MR scans resulting in false positives. Discriminating infarcts and artifacts helps in reducing infarct segmentation errors.

Materials and Methods

An algorithm based on two-dimensional symmetry of artifacts about the midsagittal plane and three-dimensional spatial coherence of infarct regions is proposed to characterize and separate infarcts from artifacts. The two dimensional symmetry is quantified by propagating Poisson errors in the intensity space of each pixel, and distant and spatially incoherent regions in a volume are considered as artifacts. The combination of two criteria enhances the confidence in the decision whether a hyperintense region is an infarct or artifact. The validity of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated using 51 cases.

Results

The improvement in results is demonstrated in three situations: (1) automatic infarct slice identification resulting in an average increase in (specificity, Dice Statistical Index (DSI)) by (15.2%, 6.9%) while the sensitivity decrease is by only 1.5% and (2) automatic infarct segmentation using two different algorithms: first resulting in an average DSI increase by 7.6% and second by 5.1%. On a matlab platform, the processing time is < 1 s.

Conclusions

The proposed algorithm is useful as a fast post-processing tool to reduce artifacts in infarct processing applications.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biomedical Imaging Lab, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, #07-01, Matrix, 30, Biopolis Road, Singapore, 138671, Singapore

    Varsha Gupta, K. N. Bhanu Prakash & Wieslaw L. Nowinski

Authors
  1. Varsha Gupta
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  2. K. N. Bhanu Prakash
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  3. Wieslaw L. Nowinski
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Correspondence to Varsha Gupta.

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Gupta, V., Prakash, K.B. & Nowinski, W.L. Towards discrimination of infarcts from artifacts in DWI scans. Int J CARS 2, 385–395 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-008-0148-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-008-0148-2

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