Three-Dimensional Volume Registration of Carotid MR Images

This chapter describes automatic three-dimensional registration techniques for magnetic resonance images of carotid vessels. The immediate applications include atherosclerotic plaque characterization and plaque burden quantification vector-based segmentation using dark blood MR images having multiple contrast weightings (proton density (PD), T1, and T2). Another application is the measurement of disease progression and regression with drug trials. A normalized mutual information registration algorithm is applied to compensate movements between image acquisitions. PD, T1, and T2 images were acquired from patients and volunteers and then matched for image analysis. Visualization methods such as contour overlap showed that vessels well aligned after registration. Distance measurements from the landmarks indicated that the registration method worked well with an error of less than 1-mm.