A skull segmentation method for brain MR images based on multiscale bilateral filtering scheme

We present a novel automatic segmentation method for the skull on brain MR images for attenuation correction in combined PET/MRI applications. Our method transforms T1-weighted MR images to the Radon domain and then detects the feature of the skull. In the Radon domain we use a bilateral filter to construct a multiscale images series. For the repeated convolution we increase the spatial smoothing at each scale and make the cumulative width of the spatial and range Gaussian doubled at each scale. Two filters with different kernels along the vertical direction are applied along the scales from the coarse to fine levels. The results from a coarse scale give a mask for the next fine scale and supervise the segmentation in the next fine scale. The method is robust for noise MR images because of its multiscale bilateral filtering scheme. After combining the two filtered sinogram, the reciprocal binary sinogram of the skull is obtained for the reconstruction of the skull image. We use the filtered back projection method to reconstruct the segmented skull image. We define six metrics to evaluate our segmentation method. The method has been tested with brain phantom data, simulated brain data, and real MRI data. Evaluation results showed that our method is robust and accurate, which is useful for skull segmentation and subsequently for attenuation correction in combined PET/MRI applications.