A Technique for the Computation of Lower Leg Muscle Volume from MRI Images in the context of Venous Return

A technique to automatically calculate the volume of a patient´s calf muscle using MRI scans in the context of venous insufficiency is presented. Rather than giving a quantifiable measurement of volume, the technique provides a pixel count which can be used to compare the calf muscle volume of one leg of a patient against the other in the context of unilateral leg ulcers or to compare one patient´s calf muscle volume against another patient. A custom Matlab program reads the MRI scans (in the form of JPEG images) and determines the number of pixels (right and left limbs separately) that fall within a user defined gray-scale band, designated as being muscle. The output from the Matlab program was compared with a manual counting method. The pixel counting algorithm was found to have an acceptable accuracy with results indicating a percentage difference from the manual method of between 2 and 9.5%.