Comparison between Different Intensity Normalization Methods in 123I-Ioflupane Imaging for the Automatic Detection of Parkinsonism Brahim, A. Ramírez Pérez De Inestrosa, Javier Gorriz Sáez, Juan Manuel Khedher, Laila Salas-González, Diego Imaging techniques Neostriatum Single photon emissions computed tomography Neuroimaging Optimization Parkinson disease Principal component analysis Image analysis Intensity normalization is an important pre-processing step in the study and analysis of DaTSCAN SPECT imaging. As most automatic supervised image segmentation and classification methods base their assumptions regarding the intensity distributions on a standardized intensity range, intensity normalization takes on a very significant role. In this work, a comparison between different novel intensity normalization methods is presented. These proposed methodologies are based on Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) image filtering and mean-squared error (MSE) optimization. The GMM-based image filtering method is achieved according to a probability threshold that removes the clusters whose likelihood are negligible in the non-specific regions. The MSE optimization method consists of a linear transformation that is obtained by minimizing the MSE in the non-specific region between the intensity normalized image and the template. The proposed intensity normalization methods are compared to: i) a standard approach based on the specific-to-non-specific binding ratio that is widely used, and ii) a linear approach based on the α-stable distribution. This comparison is performed on a DaTSCAN image database comprising analysis and classification stages for the development of a computer aided diagnosis (CAD) system for Parkinsonian syndrome (PS) detection. In addition, these proposed methods correct spatially varying artifacts that modulate the intensity of the images. Finally, using the leave-one-out cross-validation technique over these two approaches, the system achieves results up to a 92.91% of accuracy, 94.64% of sensitivity and 92.65 % of specificity, outperforming previous approaches based on a standard and a linear approach, which are used as a reference. The use of advanced intensity normalization techniques, such as the GMM-based image filtering and the MSE optimization improves the diagnosis of PS. 2015-07-16T10:57:36Z 2015-07-16T10:57:36Z 2015 journal article Brahim, A.; et al. Comparison between Different Intensity Normalization Methods in 123I-Ioflupane Imaging for the Automatic Detection of Parkinsonism. Plos One, 10(6): e0130274 (2015). [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/36991] 1932-6203 http://hdl.handle.net/10481/36991 10.1371/journal.pone.0130274 eng info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/624453 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ open access Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License Public Library of Science (Plos)