Early Postnatal Myelin Content Estimate of White Matter via T1w/T2w Ratio.

Purpose: To develop and evaluate a novel processing framework for the relative quantification of myelin content in cerebral white matter (WM) regions from brain MRI data via a computed ratio of T1 to T2 weighted intensity values.

Data: We employed high resolution (1mm isotropic) T1 and T2 weighted MRI from 46 (28 male, 18 female) neonate subjects (typically developing controls) scanned on a Siemens Tim Trio 3T at UC Irvine.

Methods: We developed a novel, yet relatively straightforward image processing framework for WM myelin content estimation based on earlier work by Glasser et al.

Automatic Tissue Segmentation of Neonate Brain MR Images with Subject-specific Atlases.

Automatic tissue segmentation of the neonate brain using Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) is extremely important to study brain development and perform early diagnostics but is challenging due to high variability and inhomogeneity in contrast throughout the image due to incomplete myelination of the white matter tracts. For these reasons, current methods often totally fail or give unsatisfying results. Furthermore, most of the subcortical midbrain structures are misclassified due to a lack of contrast in these regions.