Computer-Aided Detection of Brain Midline Using CT Images

Ghosal, Palash Kumar, Amish Datta, Ashis Sarma, Hiren KD Nandi, DebashisThe shifting of the brain midline, generally known as midline shift (MLS), is the dislocation of the brain from its actual position to a new position. Even though the shifting is very low, it has a worse effect on the overall body condition of the patient. The shifting measurement is critical for clinicians to understand the plan of action on an emergency basis. MLS of the brain can be measured by processing medical images like X-ray, ultrasound, computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In this work, the main focus is given on CT images. CT scan of the head consists of large numbers of slices. All slices are not suitable for ideal midline detection. This paper gives a proposal for an automated computer-aided efficient midline estimation system with only two steps. The first step consists of selecting suitable slices and skull detection, while the second step is to separate soft tissues part inside the detected skull and draw the midline. A proposal is given to estimate the control points (centroid, most anterior and posterior points on the falx). Promising improvement concerning modified Hausdorff distance (MHD) and mean absolute distance (MAD) compared with some of the existing methods was also observed.