Image based registration between full x-ray and spot mammograms for x-ray guided stereotactic breast biopsy

Abstract

Breast cancer is the most dominant cancer type among women. Although digital mammography plays an important role in early breast cancer detection, many cancers cannot be distinguished on mammography only, particularly in individuals with dense breast tissue. Lesions not recognizable on mammography are frequently detected by contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (CE-MRI) of the breast. Based on the suspicious characteristics, these lesions need to be further evaluated with MRI-guided biopsy. However, MRI-guided biopsy is costly, time consuming, and not commonly available. In our earlier work, we proposed a novel method for a matching tool between MRI and spot mammograms using a biomechanical model based registration to match MRI and full X-ray mammograms and an image based registration to align full X-ray mammograms and spot mammograms. In this paper, we focus on developing and evaluating methods for image based registration between full X-ray mammograms and spot mammograms. Results assessed for thirteen patients from the Medical University of Vienna are presented. The median target registration error (TRE) of the image based registration is 21.7 mm and the standard deviation is 9.3 mm.