A multi-scale method for automatic correction of intensity non-uniformity in MR images

In this paper, a novel multi-scale method for coil sensitivity profile corr ection is presented based on wavelet transform. A magnetic resonance (MR) i mage can be decomposed into two spaces by the wavelet transform: approximat e space and residual space. The approximate templates in approximate space can be thought of as multi-scale sensitivity profiles of the surface coil f or coil correction. When we choose a suitable filter for decomposition, one of the sensitivity profiles should be optimal among the multi-scale sensit ivity profiles. The optimal sensitivity profile can be chosen automatically by an analysis of the contents of the two spaces. The multi-scale method d oes not rely on any data other than the image generated by the MR scanner. The experiment showed promising results based on one-dimensional simulation and images of phantom and human images. (C) 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.