Automated detection of new MS lesions in longitudinal MRI

This book deals with the detection of new multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions in longitudinal brain magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. The detection and quantification of new lesions are crucial to follow-up MS patients. Moreover, the manual detection of these new lesions is not only time-consuming, but is also prone to intra- and inter-observer variability. Therefore, the development of automated techniques for the detection MS lesions is a major challenge. After a thorough analysis of the state-of-the art in MS lesion detection approaches, we present a new classification of techniques pointing out their main strengths and weaknesses. A complementary quantitative evaluation of some of the most remarkable methods in the literature is also provided. Subsequently, we present a new proposal based on a change detection approach, which combines various characteristics of different MR image modalities. For this purpose, including the baseline and follow-up images, we join both results obtained from PD-w and T2-w images in a supervised and an unsupervised manner. The evaluation, carried out in a quantitative and qualitative manner.