Open AccessHigh-Speed Registration of Three- and Four-dimensional Medical Images by Using Voxel Similarity
Author(s) -
Raj Shekhar,
Vladimir Zagrodsky,
Carlos R. Castro-Pareja,
Vivek Walimbe,
J.M. Jagadeesh
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
radiographics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1527-1323
pISSN - 0271-5333
DOI - 10.1148/rg.236035041
Subject(s) - image registration , computer vision , artificial intelligence , voxel , image fusion , mutual information , similarity (geometry) , computer science , similarity measure , image processing , range (aeronautics) , positron emission tomography , software , medicine , image (mathematics) , nuclear medicine , materials science , composite material , programming language
A generalized, accurate, automatic, retrospective method of image registration for three-dimensional images has been developed. The method is based on mutual information, a specific measure of voxel similarity, and is applicable to a wide range of imaging modalities and organs, rigid or deformable. A drawback of mutual information-based image registration is long execution times. To overcome the speed problem, low-cost, customized hardware to accelerate this computationally intensive task was developed. Individual hardware accelerator units (each, in principle, 25-fold faster than a comparable software implementation) can be concatenated to perform image registration at any user-desired speed. A first-generation prototype board with two processing units provided a 12- to 16-fold increase in speed. Enhancements for increasing the speed further are being developed. These advances have enabled many nontraditional applications of image registration and have made the traditional applications more efficient. Clinical applications include fusion of computed tomographic (CT), magnetic resonance, and positron emission tomographic (PET) images of the brain; fusion of whole-body CT and PET images; fusion of four-dimensional spatiotemporal ultrasonographic (US) and single photon emission CT images of the heart; and correction of misalignment between pre- and poststress four-dimensional US images.