Geodesic tractography segmentation for directional medical image analysis

• Main Author: Melonakos, John
• Published: Georgia Institute of Technology 2009
• Subjects: Medical image analysis; MRI; Tractography; Image processing; Diagnostic imaging; Geodesics (Mathematics); Geodesic flows
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1853/28139

Geodesic Tractography Segmentation is the two component approach presented in this thesis for the analysis of imagery in oriented domains, with emphasis on the application to diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imagery (DW-MRI). The computeraided analysis of DW-MRI data presents a new set of problems and opportunities for the application of mathematical and computer vision techniques. The goal is to develop a set of tools that enable clinicians to better understand DW-MRI data and ultimately shed new light on biological processes. This thesis presents a few techniques and tools which may be used to automatically find and segment major neural fiber bundles from DW-MRI data. For each technique, we provide a brief overview of the advantages and limitations of our approach relative to other available approaches. === Acknowledgements page removed per author's request, 01/06/2014.