MRI PROTOCOL FOR SEGMENTATION OF AN IMAGE DETAIL USING IMAGES ACQUIRED AT TWO DIFFERENT MAGNETIC FIELD STRENGTHS

摘要

A magnetic resonance imaging protocol includes an acquisition segment to control an acquisition sequence to acquire magnetic resonance signals at a lower main magnetic field strength. A reconstruction segment controls reconstruction of a diagnostic magnetic resonance image from the magnetic resonance signals at a lower main magnetic field strength. A segmentation segment to control segmentation of a pre-determined image- detail of the diagnostic magnetic resonance image. In the magnetic resonance imaging protocol: the acquisition sequence has a set of imaging parameters that cause the image quality of the diagnostic magnetic resonance to be similar to the image quality of the magnetic resonance training images. The segmentation segment comprises: an initialisation portion which controls (i) access to a set of magnetic resonance training images acquired at main magnetic field of a higher main magnetic field strength (ii)registration of the diagnostic magnetic resonance image to one or more of the magnetic resonance training images and (iii) a segmentation proper applied to the diagnostic image to segment the pre-determined detail from the registered diagnostic magnetic resonance image. The one or more magnetic resonance training images includes an image detail corresponding to the pre-determined image detail in the diagnostic magnetic resonance image. Notably, the magnetic resonance training magnetic resonance images are acquired at a high magnetic field strength at 7T and its level of detail facilitates the accurate segmentation of notably the hippocampus from diagnostic magnetic resonance images at lower field strength of 3T. The diagnostic magnetic resonance images are acquired such that they resemble the training magnetic resonance images.