1. A method for characterizing a pathological lesion in a patient, the method comprising: introducing into the patient a contrast enhancing agent; subjecting the patient to MRI to obtain a MRI image of a vasculature in the patient according to the contrast enhancing agent in the patient's blood; selecting a subdomain of interest of the MRI image; transforming the MRI image into at least one 3-D autocorrelation spectrum by applying a 3-D autocorrelation function to the subdomain of interest of the MRI image; analyzing the at least one 3-D autocorrelation spectrum and determining a characteristic fissure in the spectral domain that corresponds to the pathological lesion; and determining the subdomain of interest of the MRI image is normal or represents a pathological lesion according to the absence or presence of the characteristic fissure, thereby characterizing the MRI image for the pathological lesion.