Knowledge-based multi-modality three-dimensional image analysis of the brain

With the recent advances in medical imaging, three-dimensional anatomical and metabolic images of the brain are now available through MR/CT and PET/SPECT imaging modalities. Computerized multi-modality three-dimensional brain image registration and analysis can provide important correlated information for improving diagnosis and studying the pathology of disease. Such analysis may also provide help in planning brain surgery. Further, an anatomical model based quantification and analysis of internal structure can be used to develop a computerized anatomical atlas. Conventional anatomical atlases provide rigid spatial distribution of internal structures extracted from a single subject. The proposed computerized anatomical atlas provides probabilistic spatial distributions which can be easily updated to incorporate the variability of brain structures of subjects selected from pre-defined groups. This paper first presents a review of the current trends in knowledge-based segmentation, labeling, and analysis of MR brain images and then describes the Principal Axes Transformation based registration of three-dimensional MR brain images to develop composite models of selected internal brain structures. The composite models can be used as a computerized anatomical atlas in model-based segmentation and labeling of MR brain images. Three-dimensional labeled MR images of the brain can also be registered and correlated with PET images for analyzing the metabolic activity in the anatomically selected volume of interest. On the other hand, a volume of interest can be selected using the metabolic information and then analyzed for correlated anatomical information using the registered MR-PET images.