No-reference image quality metrics for structural MRI

Neuroimagery must be visually checked for unacceptable levels of distortion prior to processing. However, inspection is time-consuming, unreliable for detecting subtle distortions and often subjective. With the increasing volume of neuroimagery, objective measures of quality are needed in order to automate screening. To address this need, we have assessed the effectiveness of no-reference image quality measures, which quantify quality inherent to a single image. A data set of 1001 magnetic resonance images (MRIs) recorded from 143 subjects was used for this evaluation. The MRI images were artificially distorted with two levels of either additive Gaussian noise or intensity nonuniformity created from a linear model. A total of 239 different quality measures were defined from seven overall families and used to discriminate images for the type and level of distortion. Analysis of Variance identified two families of quality measure that were most effective: one based on Natural Scene Statistics and one originally developed to measure distortion caused by image compression. Measures from both families reliably discriminated among undistorted images, noisy images, and images distorted by intensity nonuniformity. The best quality measures were sensitive only to the distortion category and were not significantly affected by other factors. The results are encouraging enough that several quality measures are being incorporated in a real world MRI test bed.