[An automated detection of lacunar infarct regions in brain MR images: preliminary study]

The purpose of this study is to develop a technique to detect lacunar infarct regions automatically in brain MR images. Our detection method is based on the definition of lacunar infarcts. After inputted images were binarized, we used feature values such as area, circularities and the center of gravity of candidate regions to extract isolated lacunar infarct regions. We also developed and used a new filter to enhance the signals of lacunar infarcts adjacent to some high intensity regions. 10 cases involving 81 sectional images were applied to our experiment. As a result, the sensitivity was 100% with approximately 1.77 false-positives per image. Our results are promising on the first stage, although it remains to improve on problems that to eliminate false-positives and automatically establish threshold value.