Modeling Non-Central Chi Distributed Noise in T1-Weighted MR Images: Brain Tissue Segmentation Using Partial Volume Densities

Hugo Gerard Schnack¹, Rachel Brouwer¹, Hilleke Hulshoff Pol¹

A brain tissue segmentation algorithm is developed that includes a non-central Chi description of the MR scanner noise. It is applied to a set of MR images of 16 healthy human volunteers and found to produce significantly different tissue volume estimates, when compared to models incorporating Gaussian noise.