TY - JOUR
T1 - Automated prescription of an optimal imaging plane for measurement of cerebral blood flow by phase contrast magnetic resonance imaging
AU - Teng, Pang Yu
AU - Bagci, Ahmet Murat
AU - Alperin, Noam
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received September 28, 2009; revised January 31, 2011, March 14, 2011, and May 26, 2011; accepted June 3, 2011. Date of publication June 13, 2011; date of current version August 19, 2011. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health under Award R01NS052122. Asterisk indicates corresponding author P.-y. Teng is with the Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60612 USA (e-mail: pteng2@uic.edu). A. M. Bagci is with the Department of Radiology, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33136 USA (e-mail: ABagci@med.miami.edu). ∗N. Alperin is with the Department of Radiology, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33136 USA (e-mail: nalperin@med.miami.edu). Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TBME.2011.2159383
PY - 2011/9
Y1 - 2011/9
N2 - This study describes and evaluates a semiautomated method for prescribing an optimal imaging plane that is located as close as possible to the skull base, and is simultaneously nearly perpendicular to the four arteries leading blood to the brain internal carotid arteries (ICAs) and vertebral arteries (VAs). Such a method will streamline and improve reliability of the measurement of total cerebral blood flow and intracranial pressure by velocity encoding phase-contrast magnetic resonance imaging. The method first extracts the vessels centerline from a 2-D time-of-flight magnetic resonance angiogram of the neck by performing distance transformations. An anatomical marker, the V2 segment of the VAs, is then identified to guide the imaging plane to be as close and below the skull base. An imaging plane that is nearly perpendicular to the ICAs and V2 segment of VAs is then identified by minimizing a misalignment value, estimated by a weighted mean of the angles between the planes normal and the vessel axes at the vessel-plane intersections. The performance of the semiautomated method was evaluated by comparing manually selected planes to those found semiautomatically in nine magnetic resonance angiogram datasets. The semiautomated method consistently outperformed manual prescription with a significantly smaller misalignment value, 8.6 versus 20.7 (P < 0.001), respectively, and significantly improved reproducibility.
AB - This study describes and evaluates a semiautomated method for prescribing an optimal imaging plane that is located as close as possible to the skull base, and is simultaneously nearly perpendicular to the four arteries leading blood to the brain internal carotid arteries (ICAs) and vertebral arteries (VAs). Such a method will streamline and improve reliability of the measurement of total cerebral blood flow and intracranial pressure by velocity encoding phase-contrast magnetic resonance imaging. The method first extracts the vessels centerline from a 2-D time-of-flight magnetic resonance angiogram of the neck by performing distance transformations. An anatomical marker, the V2 segment of the VAs, is then identified to guide the imaging plane to be as close and below the skull base. An imaging plane that is nearly perpendicular to the ICAs and V2 segment of VAs is then identified by minimizing a misalignment value, estimated by a weighted mean of the angles between the planes normal and the vessel axes at the vessel-plane intersections. The performance of the semiautomated method was evaluated by comparing manually selected planes to those found semiautomatically in nine magnetic resonance angiogram datasets. The semiautomated method consistently outperformed manual prescription with a significantly smaller misalignment value, 8.6 versus 20.7 (P < 0.001), respectively, and significantly improved reproducibility.
KW - Computer-guided procedure
KW - magnetic resonance scan prescription
KW - phase contrast magnetic resonance imaging
KW - total cerebral blood flow quantitation
KW - vessel centerline identification
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80052069744&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=80052069744&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TBME.2011.2159383
DO - 10.1109/TBME.2011.2159383
M3 - Article
C2 - 21672671
AN - SCOPUS:80052069744
VL - 58
SP - 2566
EP - 2573
JO - IRE transactions on medical electronics
JF - IRE transactions on medical electronics
SN - 0018-9294
IS - 9
M1 - 5873130
ER -