A Collaborative Software Tool for the Evaluation of MRI Brain Segmentation Methods

The paper presents two Web services (AuroraWeb and AuroraWiki) for collaborative work on brain tissue segmentation and software tools related to MRI recordings. The Web services allow members to share data and results by uploading and downloading, compare methods through a comprehensive segmentation evaluation framework, and provide overview and documentation of segmentation algorithms and their parameters. Presently the Web services are applied to both simulated brain images (where a "ground truth" is available), and dual volume 3D brain images from a larger interdisciplinary study of cognitive aging. Commonly used brain segmenters that are tested include SPM2/SPM5, FSL and FreeSurfer, in addition to locally developed methods. New uploaded methods could either be as C/C+ + source code, where a user template is provided, or as executables. We believe this technology can improve quality and dissemination of tools for quantitative MRI of the brain.