Distortion indicator algorithm for simple artifact assessment of passive MRI markers.

The main purpose of this work is to present a simple quantitative approach for assessing artifacts in passive instruments when used in an MRI environment. It is mainly based on a quantitative indicator related with the amount of distortion produced by the instrument on a 3D surface obtained from the 2D MR image. After a preprocessing stage for attenuation of the 3D surface low frequency components, an indicator related with the volume of the background distortion is computed for each MRI slice.