Deformable Registration of 3-D ultrasound and CT for gastrointestinal interventions

Type: Bachelor/Master/Diploma Thesis
Thesis by: N.N.
Advisor: Nassir Navab
Supervision by: Tobias Reichl

Abstract

Since pre-operative images and intra-operative patient posture can differ significantly, it is desirable to align pre-operative images with intra-operative data, e.g. three-dimensional ultrasound. Recently, a method has been proposed to compute this registration a computationally practical and fully automatic manner on the graphics card (GPU). This work will be done in close collaboration with the gastroenterological department of hospital rechts der Isar. A three-dimensional ultrasound machine and electromagnetic tracking system are available at our research lab at hospital rechts der Isar.

Clinical Setting

Preoperative volume data e.g. from computed tomography is routinely available for many medical procedures. However, intra-operative patient posture is often different from those during acquisition, e.g. for endoscopic ultrasound examination the patient is positioned on the side and slightly bent over. It is desirable to align intra-operative imaging data e.g. from three-dimensional ultrasound to the preoperative volume. Then the difference between pre- and intra-operative images can be used to assess differences, or the deformation field alone can be used to warp the pre-operative data set to the new patient posture.

Task

For the integration into gastrointestinal endoscopy procedures, a work flow needs to be defined for the acquisition and registration of the intra-operative ultrasound image, preferably using a three-dimensional ultrasound probe. Existing methods need to be evaluated against the rather large deformation between pre- and intra-operative images and may need to be adapted accordingly. For the future goal of intra-operative navigation, this image and registration need to be integrated into a medical augmented reality framework, and different intra-operative visualisations of the combined preoperative CT and intra-operative ultrasound data need to be evaluated.

Methods

Recently, a method has been proposed [Wein, ISBI 2010] to compute this registration a computationally practical and fully automatic manner on the graphics card (GPU). A three-dimensional ultrasound machine and electromagnetic tracking system are available at our research lab at hospital rechts der Isar.

Literature

• Wein, W.; Kutter, O.; Aichert, A.; Zikic, D.; Kamen, A. & Navab, N.: Automatic non-linear mapping of pre-procedure CT volumes to 3D ultrasound Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE international conference on Biomedical imaging: from Nano to Macro, 2010, 1225-1228
• Zikic, D.; Wein, W.; Khamene, A.; Clevert, D.-A. & Navab, N. Fast deformable registration of 3D-ultrasound data using a variational approach. Proceedings of Int'l Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2006, 4190, 915-923 Springer Berlin / Heidelberg
• Blackall, J.; Penney, G.; King, A. & Hawkes, Alignment of sparse freehand 3-D ultrasound with preoperative images of the liver using models of respiratory motion and deformation IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 2005, 24, 1405-1416
• Leroy, A.; Mozer, P.; Payan, Y. & Troccaz, J. Rigid registration of freehand 3D ultrasound and CT-scan kidney images Proceedings of Int'l Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2004, 3216, 837-844 Springer Berlin / Heidelberg