Vessel and intracranial aneurysm segmentation using multi-range filters and local variances

Segmentation of vessels and brain aneurysms on non-invasive and flow-sensitive phase contrast magnetic resonance angiographic (PCMRA) images is essential in the detection of vascular diseases, in particular, intracranial aneurysms. In this paper, we devise a novel method based on multi-range filters and local variances to perform segmentation of vessels and intracranial aneurysms on PCMRA images. The proposed method is validated and compared using a synthetic and numerical image volume and four clinical cases. It is experimentally shown that the proposed method is capable of segmenting vessels and aneurysms with various sizes on PCMRA images.