用结构相似性指导解耦,让不同医院的脑部MRI更一致且保真。
Scanner-Agnostic MRI Harmonization via SSIM-Guided Disentanglement
- 通过可微分SSIM损失分离解剖结构与设备差异
- 跨中心图像对齐后结构相似度达0.97,亮度相似度0.98–0.99
- 提升脑龄预测和阿尔茨海默病分类性能,适合多中心研究
不同MRI扫描仪型号、采集协议和影像中心带来的差异阻碍了多中心研究中的一致分析与泛化。本文提出一种基于图像的3D T1加权脑部MRI统一化框架,将解剖内容与扫描仪及站点特异性差异解耦。模型引入基于结构相似性指数(SSIM)的可微分损失,保留生物学有意义特征的同时降低跨站点变异。该损失支持对图像亮度、对比度和结构成分的独立评估。训练与验证使用多个公开数据集,涵盖多种扫描仪和站点;测试覆盖健康与临床人群。采用多种风格目标(包括无风格参考)进行统一化处理,生成结果一致且高质量。视觉比较、体素强度分布及基于SSIM的指标显示,统一后图像在不同采集条件下实现强对齐,同时保持解剖保真度。统一化后,结构SSIM达0.97,亮度SSIM为0.98–0.99,平均体素强度分布的Wasserstein距离显著下降。下游任务性能明显提升:脑龄预测的平均绝对误差从5.36年降至3.30年,阿尔茨海默病分类的AUC从0.78升至0.85。总体而言,该框架增强了跨站点图像一致性,保留了解剖保真度,并提升了下游模型性能,为大规模多中心神经影像学研究提供稳健通用的解决方案。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
The variability introduced by differences in MRI scanner models, acquisition protocols, and imaging sites hinders consistent analysis and generalizability across multicenter studies. We present a novel image-based harmonization framework for 3D T1-weighted brain MRI, which disentangles anatomical content from scanner- and site-specific variations. The model incorporates a differentiable loss based on the Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) to preserve biologically meaningful features while reducing inter-site variability. This loss enables separate evaluation of image luminance, contrast, and structural components. Training and validation were performed on multiple publicly available datasets spanning diverse scanners and sites, with testing on both healthy and clinical populations. Harmonization using multiple style targets, including style-agnostic references, produced consistent and high-quality outputs. Visual comparisons, voxel intensity distributions, and SSIM-based metrics demonstrated that harmonized images achieved strong alignment across acquisition settings while maintaining anatomical fidelity. Following harmonization, structural SSIM reached 0.97, luminance SSIM ranged from 0.98 to 0.99, and Wasserstein distances between mean voxel intensity distributions decreased substantially. Downstream tasks showed substantial improvements: mean absolute error for brain age prediction decreased from 5.36 to 3.30 years, and Alzheimer's disease classification AUC increased from 0.78 to 0.85. Overall, our framework enhances cross-site image consistency, preserves anatomical fidelity, and improves downstream model performance, providing a robust and generalizable solution for large-scale multicenter neuroimaging studies.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。