A Nonparametric Method for Intensity Non-Uniformity Correction in Carotid MR Images

Wenbo Liu¹, Guangzhi Wang¹, Hui Ding¹

In risk evaluation of carotid atherosclerotic disease, non-uniformity may occur because of the inhomogeneous sensitivity of a custom surface coil. We propose an approach which uses a nonparametric method based on entropy minimization and an optimization method called pattern search. With the experiment of 108 slices of four kinds of sequences, the results show that this approach has a high calculation efficiency (reduction factor=4, image size=512*512, one slice progressing time is about 45 seconds), and is prior knowledge independent. According to the results, this method can be widely used in the correction of the non-uniformity in MR images.