Most edges in Markov random fields for white matter hyperintensity segmentation are worthless

Christopher G. Schwarz, Evan Fletcher, Baljeet Singh, Amy Liu, Noel Smith, Charles Decarli, Owen Carmichael

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

The time and space complexities of Markov random field (MRF) algorithms for image segmentation increase with the number of edges that represent statistical dependencies between adjacent pixels. This has made MRFs too computationally complex for cutting-edge applications such as joint segmentation of longitudinal sequences of many high-resolution magnetic resonance images (MRIs). Here, we show that simply removing edges from full MRFs can reduce the computational complexity of MRF parameter estimation and inference with no notable decrease in segmentation performance. In particular, we show that for segmentation of white matter hyperintensities in 88 brain MRI scans of elderly individuals, as many as 66% of MRF edges can be removed without substantially degrading segmentation accuracy. We then show that removing edges from MRFs makes MRF parameter estimation and inference computationally tractable enough to enable modeling statistical dependencies within and across a larger number of brain MRI scans in a longitudinal series; this improves segmentation performance compared to separate segmentations of each individual scan in the series.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2012 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2012
Pages2684-2687
Number of pages4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2012
Event34th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS 2012 - San Diego, CA, United States
Duration: Aug 28 2012Sep 1 2012

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS
ISSN (Print)1557-170X

Other

Other34th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS 2012
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySan Diego, CA
Period8/28/129/1/12

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Signal Processing
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Health Informatics

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