New variants of a method of MRI scale normalization

One of the major drawbacks of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has been the lack of a standard and quantifiable interpretation of image intensities. This causes many difficulties in image display and analysis. We have devised a two-step method wherein all images can be transformed in such a way that for the same protocol and body region, in the transformed images similar intensities will have similar tissue meaning. Normalized images can be displayed with fixed windows without the need of per case adjustment. More importantly, extraction of quantitative information about healthy organs or about abnormities, such as tumors., can considerably be simplified. This paper introduces and compares new variants of this normalization method that can help to overcome some of the problems with the original method.