Pinta: a system for visualizing the anatomical structures of the brain from MR imaging

Pinta is a system for segmentation and visualization of anatomical structures obtained from serial sections reconstructed from Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The system approaches the segmentation problem by assigning each volumetric region to an anatomical structure. This is accomplished by satisfying constraints at the pixel level, slice level, and volumetric level. Each slice is represented by an attributed graph, where nodes correspond to regions and links correspond to the relations between regions. These regions are obtained by grouping pixels based on similarity and proximity. The slice level attributed graphs are then coerced to form a volumetric attributed graph, where volu-metric consistency can be veriied. The main novelty of our approach is in the use of the volumetric graph to ensure consistency from symbolic representations obtained from individual slices. In this fashion, the system allows errors to be made at the slice level, yet removes them when the volumetric consistency cannot be veriied. Once the seg-mentation is complete, the 3D surfaces of the brain can be constructed and visualized.