Localisation of the brain in fetal MRI using bundled SIFT features

Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv. 2013;16(Pt 1):582-9. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-40811-3_73.

Abstract

Fetal MRI is a rapidly emerging diagnostic imaging tool. Its main focus is currently on brain imaging, but there is a huge potential for whole body studies. We propose a method for accurate and robust localisation of the fetal brain in MRI when the image data is acquired as a stack of 2D slices misaligned due to fetal motion. We first detect possible brain locations in 2D images with a Bag-of-Words model using SIFT features aggregated within Maximally Stable Extremal Regions (called bundled SIFT), followed by a robust fitting of an axis-aligned 3D box to the selected regions. We rely on prior knowledge of the fetal brain development to define size and shape constraints. In a cross-validation experiment, we obtained a median error distance of 5.7mm from the ground truth and no missed detection on a database of 59 fetuses. This 2D approach thus allows a robust detection even in the presence of substantial fetal motion.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Artificial Intelligence*
  • Brain / anatomy & histology*
  • Brain / embryology*
  • Humans
  • Image Enhancement / methods
  • Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods*
  • Pattern Recognition, Automated / methods*
  • Prenatal Diagnosis / methods*
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity