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Automatic Skull-Template Alignment Without a Guidance Image
Oscar Bates1, Carlos Cueto1, Ciaran Coleman2
1Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK; Sonalis Imaging Limited, London, UK.
Objective:
Transcranial ultrasound faces significant challenges due to the human skull, which limits both imaging and therapeutic applications. High-fidelity numerical simulations can mitigate skull-induced distortions but require precise skull templates (typically derived from computed tomography scans) and accurate spatial alignment with the patient's anatomy. Current alignment methods rely on concurrent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for registration, introducing financial, logistical and throughput barriers.
Methods:
We present manifold optimisation for full-waveform inversion (MOFI), a novel method to register skull templates without requiring a guidance image. MOFI aligns the skull template by minimising the difference between the simulated and the observed radiofrequency acoustic data.
Results:
We demonstrate that MOFI accurately recovers the position of skull templates in both in silico and in vitro settings, offering a viable alternative to MRI-guided registration.
Conclusions:
These results suggest that MOFI has the potential to serve as a practical alternative to MRI-guided approaches, thereby reducing barriers to the wider clinical adoption of transcranial ultrasound examination.
