Detection of Modic changes in MR images of spine using local binary patterns

Abstract

Background and objectiveWith increase in prevalence of lower back pain, fast and reliable computer aided methods for clinical diagnosis associated with the same is needed for improving the healthcare reach. The magnetic resonance images exhibit a change in signal intensity on the vertebral body close to end plates, which are termed as Modic changes (MC), and are known to be clear indicators of lower back pain. The current work deals with computer aided methods for automating the classification of signal changes between normal and degenerate cases so as to aid physicians in precise and suitable diagnosis for the ailment. MethodsIn order to detect Modic changes in vertebrae, initially the vertebrae are segmented from sagittal MR T1 and T2 imaged using a semi automatic cellular automata based segmentation. This is followed by textural feature extraction using Local Binary Patterns (LBP) and its variants. Various classifiers based on machine learning approaches using Random Forest, kNN, Bayes and SVM were evaluated for its classification performance. Since medical image dataset in general have bias towards healthy and diseased state, data augmentation techniques were also employed. ResultsThe implemented method is tested and validated over a dataset containing 100 patients. The proposed framework achieves an accuracy of 81% and 91.7% with and without augmentation of data respectively. A comparative study with the state of art methods reported in literature shows that the method proposed in better in terms of computational cost without any compromise on classification accuracy. ConclusionA novel approach to identify MC in vertebrae by exploiting textural features is proposed. This shall assist radiologists in detecting abnormalities and in treatment planning.