Artificial Neural Network (ANN) Morphological Classification by Euclidean Distance Histograms for Prognostic Evaluation of Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks the Central Nervous System. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is today a crucial tool for diagnosis of MS by allowing in-vivo detection of lesions. New lesions may represent new inflammation; they may increase in size during acute phase to contract later while the disease severity is reduced. This work focuses on the application of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based classification of MS lesions, to monitor evolution in time of lesions and to correlate this to MS phases. An euclidean distance histogram, representing the distribution of edge inter-pixel distances, is used as input. This technique gives a very promising recognition rate.