Adaptive dictionary learning for competitive classification of multiple sclerosis lesions

Sparse representations allow modeling data using a few basis elements of an over-complete dictionary and have been used in many image processing applications. We propose to use a sparse representation and an adaptive dictionary learning paradigm to automatically classify Multiple Sclerosis (MS) lesions from MRI. In particular, we investigate the effects of learning dictionaries specific to the lesions and individual healthy brain tissues, which include White Matter (WM), Gray Matter (GM) and Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF). The dictionary size plays a major role in data representation but it is an even more crucial element in the case of competitive classification. We present an approach that adapts the size of the dictionary for each class, depending on the complexity of the underlying data. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on clinical data demonstrating improved classification.