Automated Scan Plane Planning for Spine MRI using 2D Scout Images

Suguru Yokosawa¹, Yo Taniguchi¹, Yoshitaka Bito¹, Hisako Nagao², Miki Tachibana², Hiroyuki Itagaki²

We propose a faster automated scan plane planning method for the spine using 2D multi-slice orthogonal three-plane scout images. Our algorithm based method uses 2D scout images that can be acquired rapidly. Furthermore, our algorithm can prescribe scan planes faster than other methods that use 3D data due to the smaller 2D data size. We applied our proposed method in experiments with healthy volunteers and compared the automatically defined scan plane positions with those manually defined. The results showed that our method prescribed scan planes quickly and with acceptable accuracy in clinical practice.