Feasibility of Geometric-Intensity-Based Semi-Automated Delineation of the Tentorium Cerebelli from MRI Scans

This paper describes a feasibility study of a method for delineating the tentorium cerebelli in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans. The tentorium cerebelli is a thin sheet of dura matter covering the cerebellum and separating it from the posterior part of the temporal lobe and the occipital lobe of the cerebral hemispheres. Cortical structures such as the parahippocampal gyrus can be indistinguishable from tentorium in magnetized prepared rapid gradient echo and T1-weighted MRI scans. Similar intensities in these neighboring regions make it difficult to perform accurate cortical analysis in neuroimaging studies of schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease. A semi-automated, geometric, intensity-based procedure for delineating the tentorium from a whole-brain scan is described. Initial and final curves are traced within the tentorium. A cost function, based on intensity and Euclidean distance, is computed between the two curves using the Fast Marching method. The initial curve is then evolved to the final curve based on the gradient of the computed costs, generating a series of intermediate curves. These curves are then used to generate a triangulated surface of the tentorium. For 3 scans, surfaces were found to be within 2 voxels from hand segmentations.