Computer-assisted categorization of brain computerized tomography pixels into cerebrospinal fluid, white matter, and gray matter.

A computer-assisted method was employed to estimate the amounts of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), white matter, and gray matter in individual computerized tomography (CT) scans of brains. By means of an image processing procedure (DMORPH), the means +/- SD CT numbers of "pure" CSF, white matter, and gray matter were determined in each scan and stored. A CATSEG program used these means to define ranges for CT numbers for each of the three tissues on each scan, and to assign each pixel in a scan to one of the three categories. Summing over seven serial scans provided volumetric estimates of CSF, white matter, and gray matter in a brain segment. For 10 subjects aged 21 to 43 years, CSF volume equaled 1.4 to 4.7% of the total segment volume, white matter equaled 37.5 to 48.2%, and gray matter equaled 50.2 to 58.9%. Image processing hardware and software which allow standardized sampling from CT images for the evaluation of surface areas and CT numbers are described. These procedures, as applied to CT scans of the human brain, can be used to estimate the volumes of CSF, white matter, and gray matter in a selected intracranial segment.