Seminars/Colloquia/Invited Talks

Seminars

Lisa Jonasson

Segmentation of Diffusion Tensor MRI Using Level Set Methods

PLACE:	Clark 314
EVENT:	CIS Seminar Series
DATE:	December 07, 2004
TIME:	1:00 - 2:00

Abstract

Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DT-MRI) is a new imaging modality that permits non-invasive quantification of the water diffusion in living tissues. The Diffusion Tensor (DT) provides information about the intensity of the water diffusion in any direction at a certain point. The water diffusion in the brain is highly affected by its cellular organization. In particular axonal cell membrane and myelin sheath are the main components restricting water mobility. Hence the measured DT becomes highly anisotropic and oriented in areas of compact nerve fiber organization, providing an indirect way of fiber tract identification. The analysis of such images can lead to a better understanding of white matter diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia and dyslexia. First, I will give a basic introduction of DT-MRI and basic fiber tracking methods. I will then present some our recent work on segmentation methods for DT fields using level set methods. These methods include the use of similarity measures for DT in order to propagate surfaces for segmentation of fiber tracts. We also use region based, coupled level sets to simultaneously segment different structures, such as the thalamic sub nuclei.

Brief biography

Lisa Jonasson received her MSc degree in Engineering Physics at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, 2001. She is now working on her PhD in Biomedical Imaging at the Signal Processing Institute at the Swiss Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland.