MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING COLOR COMPOSITES

The invention relates to an apparatus and method for producing a single color coded composite image from a plurality of multiparameter magnetic resonance image sets. The plurality of magnetic resonance image sets are spatially aligned and are acquired using different pulse sequences to contrast various parameters of anatomical, physiological and pathological features. The method includes acquiring the gray-tone images, and plotting a histogram of the average pixel signal intensities for selected regions of interest in each image. This provide quantitative data to support qualitative assessments of tissue contrast behavior in each of the images which acts as a basis for color coding. Based on the histogram, color coefficients of red, green and blue channels are assigned to each image so that the final combination of colors will produce a semi-natural appearing composite image. Monochrome images are created based on the gray-tone images and color coefficiency tables. The monochrome images are combined to produce the composite image.