A method for classifying tissue in a magnetic resonance image, and particularly for measuring a volume of pathological tissue such as white tissue hyperintensity (leukoaraiosis) in the brain based on the segmentation of the intensity histogram of fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) images is described. A magnetic resonance image of the brain of a subject is acquired, and a pixel intensity histogram is constructed from the image. A statistically-based regression analysis is applied to the histogram to determine upper and lower threshold values, which define different types of brain tissue, particularly normal brain, cerebral spinal fluid (CSF), or lesion.