Improving image contrast using principal component analysis for subsequent image segmentation.

This article presents a technique for improving MR image contrast by linearly combining multiple MR images with different tissue contrast. The weighting coefficients of the linear combination are derived using principal component analysis. The contrast-enhanced composite image is segmented subsequently using gray level-based 1D segmentation methods. The technique reduces a multispectral image set to composite eigenimages and allows application of appropriate 1D segmentation methods that do not have equivalent counterparts in multispectral methods.