A Longitudinal Method for Simultaneous Whole-Brain and Lesion Segmentation in Multiple Sclerosis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel longitudinal MRI segmentation method for Multiple Sclerosis that enhances temporal consistency and reliability over existing cross-sectional approaches, without requiring specific scanner or protocol assumptions.

Contribution

It extends a cross-sectional segmentation method by incorporating subject-specific latent variables for improved longitudinal consistency and applicability across diverse MRI protocols.

Findings

More reliable segmentation results

Better detection of disease effects

Applicable to various MRI protocols

Abstract

In this paper we propose a novel method for the segmentation of longitudinal brain MRI scans of patients suffering from Multiple Sclerosis. The method builds upon an existing cross-sectional method for simultaneous whole-brain and lesion segmentation, introducing subject-specific latent variables to encourage temporal consistency between longitudinal scans. It is very generally applicable, as it does not make any prior assumptions on the scanner, the MRI protocol, or the number and timing of longitudinal follow-up scans. Preliminary experiments on three longitudinal datasets indicate that the proposed method produces more reliable segmentations and detects disease effects better than the cross-sectional method it is based upon.