Registration and fusion of SPECT, high-resolution MRI, and interventional MRI for thermal ablation of prostate cancer

Abstract

Abstract-We are investigating interventional MRI (iMRI) guided radiofrequency thermal ablation for the minimally invasive treatment of the prostate cancer. Nuclear medicine can detect and localize tumor in the prostate not reliably seen in MRI. We intend to combine the advantages of functional images such as nuclear medicine SPECT with iMRI-guided treatments. Our concept is to first register the low-resolution SPECT with a high-resolution MRI volume. Then by registering the high-resolution MR image with live-time iMRI acquisitions, we can, in turn, map the functional data and high-resolution anatomic information to live-time iMRI images for improved tumor targeting. For the first step, we used a three-dimensional mutual information registration method. For the latter, we developed a robust slice to volume (SV) registration algorithm with special features. The concept was tested using image data from three patients and three volunteers. The SV registration accuracy was 0 4 mm 0 2 mm as compared to our volume-to-volume registration that was previously shown to be quite accurate for these image pairs. With our image registration and fusion software, simulation experiments show that it is quite feasible to incorporate SPECT and high-resolution MRI into the iMRI-guided minimally invasive treatment procedures.Index Terms-Fusion visualization, image-guided minimally invasive therapy, image registration, interventional MRI, prostate cancer, SPECT.

MR/PET quantification tools: Registration, segmentation, classification, and MR‐based attenuation correction

“…(1) We first register the MR images with the preliminary reconstruction of PET data using the mutual informationbased registration methods developed in our lab. [22][23][24][25][26][27][28] (2) The skull tissue is segmented on the MR images using our segmentation method as described below. (WM), and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).…”

“…The voxel size was 1.0 × 1.0 × 1.6 mm 3 . We registered the CT to the corresponding MR images using the registration methods [22][23][24][25][26][27][28] that have been evaluated in our laboratory. On the CT images, we used a threshold method to obtain the skull and the results provide the ground truth of the skull for the evaluation of the MR image segmentation.…”

Computer-Aided Diagnosis of Prostate Cancer with Emphasis on Ultrasound-Based Approaches: A Review

“…Before we close our discussion on MRI-based methods, it should be noted that currently MRI-based techniques are in use for PCa computer-aided treatment procedures such as: MRI-guided radio-frequency thermal ablation of PCa (Fei et al 2003(Fei et al , 2004, planning of the radiotherapy treatment and quality control of the correct placement of radioactive seeds in prostate brachytherapy (postimplant dosimetric analysis) (Van Gellekom et al 2004;Prete et al 1998;Susil et al2004). Therapeutic methods are beyond the scope of the present survey.…”

Finite element model-based tumor registration of microPET and high-resolution MR images for photodynamic therapy in mice

“…We have found that rendering one image in gray and the other in red with a manually adjustable transparency scale, provides a very good way to visually determine registration accuracy. 36 (2) We used a checkerboard display whereby we divided the reference and registered images into sectors and created an output image by alternating sectors from the two input images. 37 Even small shifts of edges therefore are clearly visible.…”