Title
An algorithm for optimal fusion of atlases with different labeling protocols.
Abstract
In this paper we present a novel label fusion algorithm suited for scenarios in which different manual delineation protocols with potentially disparate structures have been used to annotate the training scans (hereafter referred to as “atlases”). Such scenarios arise when atlases have missing structures, when they have been labeled with different levels of detail, or when they have been taken from different heterogeneous databases. The proposed algorithm can be used to automatically label a novel scan with any of the protocols from the training data. Further, it enables us to generate new labels that are not present in any delineation protocol by defining intersections on the underling labels. We first use probabilistic models of label fusion to generalize three popular label fusion techniques to the multi-protocol setting: majority voting, semi-locally weighted voting and STAPLE. Then, we identify some shortcomings of the generalized methods, namely the inability to produce meaningful posterior probabilities for the different labels (majority voting, semi-locally weighted voting) and to exploit the similarities between the atlases (all three methods). Finally, we propose a novel generative label fusion model that can overcome these drawbacks. We use the proposed method to combine four brain MRI datasets labeled with different protocols (with a total of 102 unique labeled structures) to produce segmentations of 148 brain regions. Using cross-validation, we show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the generalizations of majority voting, semi-locally weighted voting and STAPLE (mean Dice score 83%, vs. 77%, 80% and 79%, respectively). We also evaluated the proposed algorithm in an aging study, successfully reproducing some well-known results in cortical and subcortical structures.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.11.031
NeuroImage
Keywords
Field
DocType
Segmentation,Label fusion
Training set,Segmentation,Computer science,Generalization,Fusion,Algorithm,Posterior probability,Weighted voting,Artificial intelligence,Probabilistic logic,Majority rule,Machine learning
Journal
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
106
1053-8119
7
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.53
28
9
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Iglesias Juan Eugenio149731.51
Sabuncu Mert R.2134478.78
Iman Aganj319518.93
Priyanka Bhatt4181.11
Christen Casillas5181.11
David H Salat626119.62
Adam L Boxer7191.48
Fischl Bruce84131219.39
Koen Van Leemput970.53