Classification of magnetic resonance images from renal perfusion studies of rabbits

Dynamic Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) with contrast media injection is an important tool to study renal perfusion in humans and animals. The goal of this study is to build classifiers for the automatic classification of a kidney as healthy or pathological. A new algorithm is developed that segments out the cortex from the rest of the kidney including the medulla, the renal pelvic, and the background. The performance of two classifier-types (Soft Independent Method of Class Analogy, SIMCA; Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis, PLS-DA) is compared for various types of data pre-processing including segmentation, feature extraction, baseline correction, centering, and standard normal variate (SNV).