A pyramidal approach for automatic segmentation of multiple sclerosis lesions in brain MRI

Quantitative assessment of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) lesion load of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most objective approach for a better understanding of the history of the pathology, either natural or modified by therapies. To achieve an accurate and reproducible quantification of MS lesions in conventional brain MRI, an automatic segmentation algorithm based on a multiresolution approach using pyramidal data structures is proposed. The systematic pyramidal decomposition in the frequency domain provides a robust and flexible low level tool for MR image analysis. Context-dependent rules regarding MRI findings in MS are used as high level considerations for automatic lesion detection.