Quantifying Liver Cirrhosis by Extracting Significant Features from MRI T2 Image

• Main Authors: Ming-Hong Hshiao, Po-Chou Chen, Jo-Chi Jao, Yung-Hui Huang, Chen-Chang Lee, Shih-Yu Chao, Li-Wei Lin, Tai-Been Chen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hindawi Limited 2012-01-01
• Series: The Scientific World Journal
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1100/2012/343847

Most patients with liver cirrhosis must undergo a series of clinical examinations, including ultrasound imaging, liver biopsy, and blood tests. However, the quantification of liver cirrhosis by extracting significant features from a T2-weighted magnetic resonance image (MRI) provides useful diagnostic information in clinical tests. Sixty-two subjects were randomly selected to participate in this retrospective analysis with assigned to experimental and control groups. The T2-weighted MRI was obtained and to them dynamic adjusted gray levels. The extracted features of the image were standard deviation (SD), mean, and entropy of pixel intensity in the region of interest (ROI). The receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve, 95% confidence intervals, and kappa statistics were used to test the significance and agreement. The analysis of area under ROC shows that SD, mean, and entropy in the ROI were significant between the experimental group and the control group. Smaller values of SD, mean, and entropy were associated with a higher probability of liver cirrhosis. The agreements between the extracted features and diagnostic results were shown significantly (𝑃<0.001). In this investigation, quantitative features of SD, mean, and entropy in the ROI were successfully computed by the dynamic gray level scaling of T2-weighted MRI with high accuracy.