Enhancement and segmentation for NMR images of blood flow in arteries

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Abstract
The widespread prevalence of atherosclerotic vascular disease has given rise to the need for a simple, noninvasive imaging examination of the cardiovascular performance of patients. The potential of using Magnetic Resonance (MR) Imaging to quantify flow in vivo has for reaching possibilities for the future of preventive medicine. In this paper we address the problem of using MR velocity imaging to analyse the flow boundaries in human arteries which are of great importance to the early diagnosis of occlusive diseases. A flow related enhancement process is introduced in this paper. It is designed to suppress the residuals and the noisy background of the MR velocity images caused by misregistration, tissue movement and uneven magnetic field and provide great improvement in signal to noise ratio. From the enhanced image, the main flow areas can be delineated by a thresholding process which defines the kernel of the flow. The boundaries of the kernel region are then dynamically guided by a defined flow boundary localization process to their final positions. The results of the application of this coarse to fine process show its robustness and effectiveness for the determination of the blood blow boundaries form very low quality MR velocity images.

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