Texture Analysis of MRI in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis Based on the Gray-Level Difference Statistics

Objective: To investigate the differences of texture features among macroscopic lesion white matter (LWM), normal appearing white matter (NAWM) in magnetic resonance images (MRI) from patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and normal white matter (NWM) from normal controls by gray-level difference statistics, and to detect the hidden abnormality of NAWM. Methods: T2-weighted MRI of 26 MS patients and 26 healthy subjects were selected, and 26 regions of interests (ROI) were chosen from MS patient MRI and healthy subject MRI for LWM, NAWM and NWM respectively. All of the ROI were analyzed by gray-level difference statistics, and contrast, angular second moment, mean and entropy those four texture features were extracted. Finally statistic significance was tested among three groups. Results: In LWM, NAWM and NWM groups, the increasing tendency was shown for angular second moment (0.1108, 0.2173 and 0.2649) , while decreasing tendency for contrast (41.5534, 9.4723 and 4.7341) mean(0.0184, 0.0086 and 0.0064) and entropy (1.0745, 0.7715 and 0.6648). Except contrast that the difference was not significant (P=0.26) between NAWM and NWM , the rests had significant differences (P<0.05) between LWM and NAWM (or NWM) or NAWM and NWM. Conclusion: Texture analysis can possible reveal the microscopic abnormality in patients with MS,and will be beneficial to the research of early diagnosis and treatment estimate of MS.