METHOD FOR EXTRACTING FIBROUS IMAGE, IMAGE PROCESSING DEVICE, AND MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING SYSTEMS

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To realize a method for extracting fibrous images which enables an automatic and rapid extraction of nerve fiber images, an image processing device, and a magnetic resonance imaging system.

SOLUTION: A diffusion tensor matrix is calculated from information on diffusion tensor images and T2weighted images (Step S603). Eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the diffusion tensor matrix are obtained by diagonalyzing the matrix (Step S604). A fractional anisotropy (FA) value which is an index of anisotropy of the diffusion coefficient is calculated from the eigenvalues (Step S605). A region of the nerve fibers is extracted from the FA value (Step S606). Since the pixels of the nerve fibers in the direction of the maximum eigenvector showing the direction of the nerve fibers are extracted sequentially from the region of the nerve fibers by using a region extension means 250 (Step S607), the extraction of the information on the nerve fiber images is realized in a short time without individual differences.

COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO