Difficulties of T1 brain MRI segmentation techniques

This paper looks at the difficulties that can confound published T1-weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) brain segmentation methods, and compares their strengths and weaknesses. Using data from the Internet Brain Segmentation Repository (IBSR) as a "gold standard", we ran three different segmentation methods with and without correcting for intensity inhomogeneity. We then calculated the similarity index between the brain masks produced by the segmentation methods and the mask provided by the IBSR. The intensity histograms under the segmented masks were also analyzed to see if a Bi-Gaussian model could be fit onto T1 brain data. Contrary to our initial beliefs, our study found that intensity based T1-weighted segmentation methods were comparable or even superior to, methods utilizing spatial information. All methods appear to have parameters that need adjustment depending on the data set used. Furthermore, it seems that the methods we tested for intensity inhomogeneity did not improve the segmentations due to the nature of the IBSR data set.