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Review and evaluation of MRI nonuniformity corrections for brain tumor response measurements
Author(s) -
Velthuizen Robert P.,
Heine John J.,
Cantor Alan B.,
Lin Hongbo,
Fletcher Lynn M.,
Clarke Laurence P.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.598357
Subject(s) - imaging phantom , smoothing , homomorphic filtering , artifact (error) , brain tumor , computer science , nuclear medicine , segmentation , artificial intelligence , computer vision , medicine , image (mathematics) , image enhancement , pathology
Current MRI nonuniformity correction techniques are reviewed and investigated. Many approaches are used to remedy this artifact, but it is not clear which method is the most appropriate in a given situation, as the applications have been with different MRI coils and different clinical applications. In this work four widely used nonuniformity correction techniques are investigated in order to assess the effect on tumor response measurements (change in tumor volume over time): a phantom correction method, an image smoothing technique, homomorphic filtering, and surface fitting approach. Six brain tumor cases with baseline and follow‐up MRIs after treatment with varying degrees of difficulty of segmentation were analyzed without and with each of the nonuniformity corrections. Different methods give significantly different correction images, indicating that rf nonuniformity correction is not yet well understood. No improvement in tumor segmentation or in tumor growth/shrinkage assessment was achieved using any of the evaluated corrections.