Lean tissue volume quantification

1. A method of quantifying a lean tissue volume comprising the steps of acquiring an image, by a magnetic resonance imaging device, as a water-fat separated magnetic resonance image, wherein the acquired image comprises a water image and a fat image each comprising a plurality of volume elements, each volume element in the water image comprising a water signal level and each volume element in the fat image comprising a fat signal level,

generating a calibrated fat image from the fat image using pure adipose tissue as an intensity reference,

providing a soft tissue mask defining areas of soft tissue in the acquired image,

defining a region of interest of the acquired image, and

calculating a lean tissue volume by multiplying, for each volume element in the region of interest, the soft tissue mask with the volume of each volume element and the result of one minus the calibrated fat image, and summarizing the products of said multiplications for all volume elements in the region of interest, wherein an increased accuracy of a quantification of the lean tissue volume is provided by removing the fat signal level from the water signal level in those volume elements classified within the region of interest.

2. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising a step of providing a calibrated water image and a step of calculating a lean tissue water concentration by multiplying, for each volume element in the acquired image, the soft tissue mask with the calibrated water image and the volume of each volume element, determining a sum of the products of said multiplications for all volume elements in the region of interest, and divide said sum with said calculated lean tissue volume.

3. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the step of providing a soft tissue mask comprises a step of removing volume elements that does not contain magnetic resonance visible tissue, wherein the step of removing volume elements comprises the steps of

providing a calibrated water image,

applying a threshold to the sum of the calibrated fat image and the calibrated water image, wherein volume elements above said threshold forms a binary tissue mask, and

forming a fuzzy soft tissue mask by setting the volume elements within one volume element from the borders of the binary tissue mask equal to the sum of the normalized water and fat images.

4. The method according claim 1 , wherein the step of defining a region of interest comprises a step of non-rigid registration of at least one atlas to the acquired image to segment the acquired image.

5. The method according to claim 4 , wherein the step of non-rigid registration comprises a step of multi-scaled and phase-based registration, such as a morphon registration, of said atlas.

6. The method according to claim 4 , wherein said atlas comprises anatomical information that is transferred to the acquired image.

7. The method according to claim 6 , wherein the results of the registration of the multiple atlases are added to the acquired image to form a map, wherein said map is normalized to form a probability map defining the probability that a volume element in the acquired image represents muscle tissue, and wherein the normalization provides a value between 0 and 1 for volume elements in the acquired image, wherein the value 1 represents that all of the multiple atlases define that volume element as muscle tissue, and the value 0 that none of the multiple atlases define the volume element as muscle tissue.

8. The method according to claim 7 , wherein the method further comprises a step of classifying volume elements in the water image as a tissue group based on said at least one atlas, wherein said step of classifying comprises a step of labeling volume elements in the acquired image to a tissue group based on the probability map.

9. The method according to claim 8 , wherein said step of labeling volume elements comprises a step of applying a threshold of number of atlases that need to classify a specific volume element to a tissue group in order to label that volume element to said tissue group.

10. The method according to claim 9 , wherein a threshold of number of atlases is selected for a first tissue group which defers from a threshold selected for a second tissue group.

11. The method according to claim 4 , wherein the step of non-rigid registration comprises a step of separately registering multiple atlases to the acquired image.

12. The method according to claim 4 , wherein the step of non-rigid registration comprises a step of selecting, from a group of atlases, one or more atlases that comprise the most similar tissue volume to the acquired image, and wherein said step of selecting one or more atlases is repeated in an iterative process, wherein the atlases selected in a first selection process are used as basis for selection in a second selection process.

13. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the calibrated fat image, the soft tissue mask and the region of interest all are defined over a common value range.

14. The method according to claim 13 , wherein the common value range extends from 0 to 1.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the region of interest comprises one of a specific organ, a muscle, a muscle group or a breast, the quantification of the lean tissue volume indicating a condition of the region of interest.