3D blob based brain tumor detection and segmentation in MR images

Abstract

Automatic detection and segmentation of brain tumors in 3D MR neuroimages can significantly aid early diagnosis, surgical planning, and follow-up assessment. However, due to diverse location and varying size, primary and metastatic tumors present substantial challenges for detection. We present a fully automatic, unsupervised algorithm that can detect single and multiple tumors from 3 to 28,079 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> in volume. Using 20 clinical 3D MR scans containing from 1 to 15 tumors per scan, the proposed approach achieves between 87.84% and 95.30% detection rate and an average end-to-end running time of under 3 minutes. In addition, 5 normal clinical 3D MR scans are evaluated quantitatively to demonstrate that the approach has the potential to discriminate between abnormal and normal brains.