Partial volume estimation and the fuzzy C-means algorithm [brain MRI application]

Partial volume averaging (PVA) is present in nearly all practical imaging situations, medical imaging in particular. One method that has been used to account for the effects of PVA is the fuzzy c-means algorithm (FCM). The authors propose a new method for estimating the partial volume coefficient of each class at each voxel in a given image using a Bayesian statistical model. A prior probability on the partial volume coefficients is used to reject how most voxels in the image are expected to be pure. The authors then show that the results obtained by this method are quite similar and in some cases equivalent to results obtained using FCM. Both algorithms are demonstrated on a magnetic resonance image of the brain.