Semiautomatic registration of volumetric ultrasound scans

We demonstrate the ability to register easily and accurately volumetric ultrasound scans without significant data preprocessing or user intervention. Two volumetric ultrasound breast scan data sets were acquired from two different patients with breast cancer. Volumetric scan data were acquired by manually sweeping a linear array transducer mounted on a linear slider with a position encoder. The volumetric data set pairs consisted of color flow and/or power mode Doppler data sets acquired serially on the same patients. A previously described semiautomatic registration method based on maximizing mutual information was used to determine the transform between data sets. The results suggest that, even for the deformable breast, three-dimensional full affine transforms can be sufficient to obtain clinically useful registrations; warping may be necessary for increased registration accuracy. In conclusion, mutual information-based automatic registration as implemented on modern workstations is capable of yielding clinically useful registrations in times <35 min.