B-spline based free form deformation thoracic non-rigid registration of CT and PET images

Abstract

Accurate attenuation correction of emission data is mandatory for quantitative analysis of PET images. One of the main concerns in CT-based attenuation correction(CTAC) of PET data in multimodality PET/CT imaging is misalignment between PET and CT images. The aim of this study, is to proposed a hybrid method which is simple, fast and accurate, for registration of PET and CT data which affected from respiratory motion in order to improve the quality of CTAC. The algorithm is composed of three methods: First, using B-spline Free Form Deformation to describe both images and deformation field. Then applying a pre-filtering on both PET and CT images before segmentation of structures in order to reduce the respiratory related attenuation correction artifacts of PET emission data. In this approach, B-spline using FFD provide more accurate adaptive transformation to align the images, and structure constraints obtained from prefiltering applied to guide the algorithm to be more fast and accurate. Also it helps to reduce the radiation dose in PET/CT by avoiding repetition of CT imaging. These advances increase the potential of the method for routine clinical application.