System and method for estimating acute cerebral infarction onset time

A system for estimation of an acute cerebral infarction onset time, the system comprising:

• an image storage that stores a first image and a second image of a first patient whose acute cerebral infarction onset time is not identified, the first image is a fluid-attenuated inversion recovery image, and the second image is a diffusion-weighted image;
• an infarction region image extractor that extracts an infarction region image from the second image;
• an image aligner that aligns the second image with the first image;
• an infarction region definer that defines an infarction region in the first image, based on a result of the alignment of the second image with the first image;
• a feature information extractor that extracts feature information of the first patient, from the infarction region of the first image;
• an elapsed amount of time calculator that compares the extracted feature information with reference data, and calculates an amount of time that has elapsed since the acute cerebral infarction onset time, based on a result of the comparison of the extracted feature information with reference data;
• and
• a ratio map generator configured to:
• compare the infarction region with a symmetric region located in a brain of the first patient and being symmetrical to the infarction region;
• extract a relative signal amount of the infarction region, based on a result of the comparison of the infarction region with the symmetric region;
• and
• generate a third image that shows a ratio map of a pixel comparison of pixels of the symmetric region with corresponding pixels of the infarction region,
• wherein the feature information includes:
• first feature information extracted from the infarction region in the first image;
• and
• second feature information extracted from an infarction region in third image.