APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR VISUALIZING TISSUE MACRO- AND MICROSTRUCTURE FOR PATHOLOGY EVALUATION IN MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING

Apparatus and method for visualizing tissue macro- and microstructure for pathology evaluation in Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The present invention discloses essentially a method improving a detection of a brain tissue pathology in magnetic resonance (MR) images of a patient, the method comprising: - acquiring multiple MR imaging data for contrast maps of a patient brain, and creating at least 4 different contrast maps; - from said previously acquired multiple MR imaging data, performing an estimation of gray matter (GM), white matter (WM) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentration for each voxel of at least a part of the patient brain; - from said previously acquired multiple MR imaging data, segmenting said part of the patient brain in different regions-of-interest (ROls) according to a chosen atlas; - for each voxel of each of the previously created contrast maps of the patient brain, computing, for at least said part of the patient brain, a deviation score z V obtained by combining voxel intensity of the contrast map in the patient brain, voxel tissues concentrations of the GM, WM and CSF concentration maps in the patient brain, and parameters values characterising a contrast map intensity distribution of each tissue in healthy controls obtained for the ROI to which said voxel belongs to, and creating from said deviation score and for each of the previously created quantitative contrast maps, a deviation map representing said part of the brain in function of the deviation score calculated for each voxel; - combining the previously obtained deviation maps into a single pathology map.