Blob-like feature extraction and matching for brain MR images

• Published in: 2011 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Vol. 2011; pp. 7799 - 7802
• Main Authors: Razlighi, Q. R., Stern, Y.
• Format: Conference Proceeding Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01-01-2011
• Subjects: Algorithms; Band pass filters; Brain - anatomy & histology; Computer vision; Detectors; Feature extraction; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods; Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Noise; Normal Distribution; Three dimensional displays
• ISBN: 9781424441211; 1424441218
• ISSN: 1094-687X; 1557-170X; 1558-4615
• DOI: 10.1109/IEMBS.2011.6091922

The cerebral cortex of the human brain is highly folded. It is useful for neuroscientists and clinical researchers to identify and/or quantify cortical folding patterns across individuals. The top (gyri) and bottom (sulci) of these folds resemble the "blob-like" features used in computer vision. In this article, we evaluate different blob detectors and descriptors on brain MR images, and introduce our own, the "brain blob detector and descriptor (BBDD)." For the first time blob detectors are considered as spatial filters under the scale-space framework and their impulse responses are manipulated for detecting the structures in our interest. The BBDD detector is tailored to the scale and structure of blob-like features that coincide with cortical folds, and its descriptors performed well at discriminating these features in our evaluation.