Deep learning of quality control for stereotaxic registration of human brain MRI

Abstract

Linear registration to stereotaxic space is a common first step in many automated image-processing tools for analysis of human brain MRI scans. This step is crucial for the success of the following image-processing steps. Several well-established algorithms are commonly used in the field of neuroimaging for this task, but none of them has a 100% success rate. Manual assessment of the registration is commonly used as part of quality control.\n\nWe propose a completely automatic quality control method based on deep learning that replaces human rater and accurately performs quality control assessment for stereotaxic registration of T1w brain scans.\n\nIn a recently published study from our group comparing linear registration methods, we used a database of 9693 MRI scans from several publically available datasets and applied five linear registration tools. In this study, the resulting images that were assessed and labeled by a human rater are used to train a deep neural network to detect cases when registration failed.\n\nOur method was able to achieve 88% accuracy and 11% false positive rate in detecting scans that should pass quality control, better than a manual QC rater.