Besides the assessment of clinical symptoms, which are often difficult to quantify, many of the neurodegenerative and mental disorders, and cerebrovascular diseases, can be assessed by quantifying the occurrence of brain white matter lesions (WMLs). WMLs are one of the few paraclinical symptoms that appear well before any clinical symptoms can even be recognized. Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging is the standard technique for the detection of WMLs (2), while the analysis of MR images allows the extraction of quantitative in vivo metrics of anatomically and physiologically relevant parameters of WMLs, which are sensitive biomarkers. Quantitative measurements of WMLs, such as their number, size, shape and location and the corresponding measurements of changes of these parameters over time are extremely valuable but less explored biomarkers compared to qualitative assessments of WMLs. Quantification of WMLs requires their outlining in threedimensional (3D) MR images, traditionally performed manually, slicebyslice. Manual outlining of WMLs in MR images is subjective, tedious, and time consuming. Because the manual WML outlines are inaccurate and highly variable between different raters, and thus, manual quantitative measurements cannot be fully trusted we have developed a computer-aided procedure for quantification of WML which is objective and reliable. The software is currently extensively tested laboratorically and clinically.
F.21 Development of new health/diagnostic methods/procedures
The project PI in Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, which is according to the impact factor the 16th among 248 journals in the field of Electrical Engineering.
C.04 Editorial board of an international magazine