Description:
This activity comprises the development, evolution and tuning of a software tool that calculate relaxation rates and proton density (QMCI images) voxelwise in the knee and wrist, provided a suitable set of MRI acquisitions, and segment the tissues of various structures. The current version, tuned for 0. 25 Tesla, segments knee studies into the following 6 compartments: Bone; Cartilage; Muscle, Fat; Fluid and Low Proton Density tissue. The software furnishes volumetric and relaxometric information of each compartment. It also highlights the relaxation rates and proton density of the cartilage in a T1-w image to better show the pathology. This model based segmentation uses relaxation rates, proton density and anatomical information. The software is configurable and can be optimized in various environmental situations as different scanner characteristics and different anatomical regions (see also Relaxometry based MRI brain segmentation).