Automated Estimation of Acute Infarct Volume from Noncontrast Head CT Using Image Intensity Inhomogeneity Correction.

Automated Estimation of Acute Infarct Volume from Noncontrast Head CT Using Image Intensity Inhomogeneity Correction. Int J Biomed Imaging. 2019;2019:1720270 Authors: Cauley KA, Mongelluzzo GJ, Fielden SW Abstract Identification of early ischemic changes (EIC) on noncontrast head CT scans performed within the first few hours of stroke onset may have important implications for subsequent treatment, though early stroke is poorly delimited on these studies. Lack of sharp lesion boundary delineation in early infarcts precludes manual volume measures, as well as measures using edge-detection or region-filling algorithms. We wished to test a hypothesis that image intensity inhomogeneity correction may provide a sensitive method for identifying the subtle regional hypodensity which is characteristic of early ischemic infarcts. A digital image analysis algorithm was developed using image intensity inhomogeneity correction (IIC) and intensity thresholding. Two different IIC algorithms (FSL and ITK) were compared. The method was evaluated using simulated infarcts and clinical cases. For synthetic infarcts, measured infarct volumes demonstrated strong correlation to the true lesion volume (for 20% decreased density "infarcts," Pearson r = 0.998 for both algorithms); both algorithms demonstrated improved accuracy with increasing lesion size and decreasing lesion density. In clinical cases (41 acute infarcts in 30 patients), calculated infarct vo...
Source: International Journal of Biomedical Imaging - Category: Radiology Tags: Int J Biomed Imaging Source Type: research