Multi-class probabilistic atlas-based segmentation method in breast MRI

Organ localization is an important topic in medical imaging in aid of cancer treatment and diagnosis. An example are the pharmacokinetic model calibration methods based on a reference tissue, where a pectoral muscle delineation in breast MRI is needed to detect malignancy signs. Atlas-based segmentation has been proven to be powerful in brain MRI. This is the first attempt to apply an atlas-based approach to segment breast in T1 weighted MR images. The atlas consists of 5 structures (fatty and dense tissues, heart, lungs and pectoral muscle). It has been used in a Bayesian segmentation framework to delineate the mentioned structures. Global and local registration have been compared, where global registration showed the best results in terms of accuracy and speed. Overall, a Dice Similarity Coefficient value of 0.8 has been obtained which shows the validity of our approach to Breast MRI segmentation.