Dynamic changes of multiple sclerosis lesions on T2-FLAIR MRI using digital image processing

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a complex autoimmune neurological disease affecting the myelin sheath of the nerve system. In the world, there are about 2.5 million patients with MS, in South and East Asia the ratio of MS is high. This disease affects young and middle-aged people. The MS is a fatal disease, and the numbers and volumes of MS lesions can be used to determine the degree of disease severity and track its progression. The detection of multiple sclerosis is a critical problem in MRI images because MS is described as frequently involves lesions, it can be appeared on a scan at one time-point and not appeared in subsequent time points. Also, MS on the T2 FLAIR MRI image is more often manifested by the presence of focal changes in the substance of the brain and spinal cord, which complicate their dynamic control according to MRI data. The detection and extraction of the MS lesions features are not just a tedious and time-consuming process, but also required experts and trained physicians, so the computer-aided tools become very important to overcome these obstacles. In this paper, we present a novel computer-aided approach based on digital image processing methods for enhancing the structures, removing undesired signals, segmenting the MS lesions from the background, and finally measuring the size of MS lesions to provide information about the current status of MS, which represent MS lesions that are either new, increasing or shrinking. The accuracy of the proposed methodology was 96%, according to the results presented in data. The lack of accuracy is related to some errors in segmentation.