Multiresolution image registration for multimodal brain images and fusion for better neurosurgical planning

Imaging modalities in medicine gives complementary information. Inadequacy in clinical information made single imaging modality insufficient. There is a need for computer-based system that permits rapid acquisition of digital medical images and performs multi-modality registration, segmentation and three-dimensional planning of minimally invasive neurosurgical procedures. In this regard proposed article presents multimodal brain image registration and fusion for better neurosurgical planning.

In proposed work brain data is acquired from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Computed Tomography (CT) modalities. CT and MRI images are pre-processed and given for image registration. BSpline deformable registration and multiresolution image registration is performed on the CT and MRI sequence. CT is fixed image and MRI is moving image for registration. Later end result is fusion of CT and registered MRI sequences.

BSpline deformable registration is performed on the slices gave promising results but on the sequences noise have been introduced in the resultant image because of multimodal and multiresolution input images. Then multiresolution registration technique is performed on the CT and MRI sequence of the brain which gave promising results.

The end resultant fused images are validated by the radiologists and mutual information measure is used to validate registration results. It is found that CT and MRI sequence with more number of slices gave promising results. Few cases with deformation during misregistrations recorded with low mutual information of about 0.3 and which is not acceptable and few recorded with 0.6 and above mutual information during registration gives promising results.