Program Information

Deformable Registration of MRI and CT Images for MRI-Guided Radiation Therapy

H Zhong*, N Wen , J Gordon , B Movsas , I Chetty , Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI

Presentations

TH-A-BRF-8 Thursday 7:30AM - 9:30AM Room: Ballroom F

Purpose: To evaluate the quality of a commercially available MRI-CT image registration algorithm and then develop a method to improve the performance of this algorithm for MRI-guided prostate radiotherapy.

Methods: Prostate contours were delineated on ten pairs of MRI and CT images using Eclipse. Each pair of MRI and CT images was registered with an intensity-based B-spline algorithm implemented in Velocity. A rectangular prism that contains the prostate volume was partitioned into a tetrahedral mesh which was aligned to the CT image. A finite element method (FEM) was developed on the mesh with the boundary constraints assigned from the Velocity generated displacement vector field (DVF). The resultant FEM displacements were used to adjust the Velocity DVF within the prism. Point correspondences between the CT and MR images identified within the prism could be used as additional boundary constraints to enforce the model deformation. The FEM deformation field is smooth in the interior of the prism, and equal to the Velocity displacements at the boundary of the prism. To evaluate the Velocity and FEM registration results, three criteria were used: prostate volume conservation and center consistence under contour mapping, and unbalanced energy of their deformation maps.

Results: With the DVFs generated by the Velocity and FEM simulations, the prostate contours were warped from MRI to CT images. With the Velocity DVFs, the prostate volumes changed 10.2% on average, in contrast to 1.8% induced by the FEM DVFs. The average of the center deviations was 0.36 and 0.27 cm, and the unbalance energy was 2.65 and 0.38 mJ/cc3 for the Velocity and FEM registrations, respectively.

Conclusion: The adaptive FEM method developed can be used to reduce the error of the MI-based registration algorithm implemented in Velocity in the prostate region, and consequently may help improve the quality of MRI-guided radiation therapy.

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