The present invention relates to a method for visualizing ST data based on
principal component analysis. ST data indicative of a plurality of local
S spectra, each local S spectrum corresponding to an image point of an
image of an object are received. In a first step principal component axes
of each local S spectrum are determined. This step is followed by the
determination of a collapsed local S spectrum by projecting a magnitude
of the local S spectrum onto at least one of its principal component
axes, thus reducing the dimensionality of the S spectrum. After
determining a weight function capable of distinguishing frequency
components within a frequency band a texture map for display is generated
by calculating a scalar value from each principal component of the
collapsed S spectrum using the weight function and assigning the scalar
value to a corresponding position with respect to the image. The
visualization method according to the invention is a highly beneficial
tool for image analysis substantially retaining local frequency
information but not requiring prior knowledge of frequency content of an
image. Employment of the visualization method according to the invention
is highly beneficial, for example, for motion artifact suppression in MRI
image data, texture analysis and disease specific tissue segmentation.