Non-rigid MR-CT Image Registration

Non-rigid Registration of Pre-procedural MRI and Intra-procedural CT for CT-guided Cryoablation Therapy of Liver Cancer Tutorial

Overview

This tutorial demonstrates how to perform a pre-operated contrast enhanced MR image to intra-procedure CT image non-rigid registration. The case study is CT-guided liver tumor cryoablation.

NON-RIGID MR-CT IMAGE REGISTRATION: As shown in this figure, non-rigid registration can enhance visualization of tumor margin and location.

Clinical significants

• Non-rigid registrations desirable to compensate for liver deformation caused by patient positioning, respiratory motion, and interventional manipulation.
• A multi-modality non-rigid registration method can enhance visualization of tumor margins and location during the planning, targeting, and monitoring phases of CT imaging-guided cryoablation procedure.

REGISTRATION STRATEGY / ROADMAP:

Tutorial Topics / Targets

• Slicer Modules Used:
  • N4ITKBiasField Correction
  • Editor
  • BRAINSFitIGT Registration
• Image Processing Tasks Performed:
  • Intensity non-uniformly correction
  • Mask generation / segmentation
  • Inter-modality non-rigid image registration
• Image Data Used:
  • Pre-operative abdominal MR with surface coil, showing liver
  • Planning and Intra-operative CT with cryo-probe

Overview

• This tutorial will go through the following steps (in order):
• Preprocessing
  • MRI mask generation
  • CT mask generation
  • MRI Bias Field Intensity Correction
• Registration
  • MRI-CT(#1) non-rigid registration
  • CT(#1)-CT(#2) affine registration
  • Resampling & Fusion

Tutorials

Non-rigid Registration of Pre-procedural MRI and Intra-procedural CT for CT-guided Cryoablation Therapy of Liver Cancer Tutorial ‏ [ppt]‏ [pdf]

Tutorial materials

Material data:

• Non-rigid_MR_CT_Image_RegistrationTutorialData_TutorialContestSummer2011.tar.gz

Reference

This method is based on the registration workflow originally developed for prostate MRI registration as follows.

A. Fedorov, K. Tuncali, F. Fennessy, J. Tokuda, N. Hata, S.W. Wells, R. Kikinis, and C.M. Tempany. Hierarchical Image Registration for Improved Sampling during 3T MRI-guided Transperineal Targeted Prostate Biopsy, ISMRM 2011

People

Atsushi Yamada, Ph.D. (Research Associate, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School)
Dominik S. Meier, Ph.D. (Assistant Professor, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School)
Nobuhiko Hata, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School)