Registration Of Scans Research Articles

Image-guided navigation and video-assisted thoracoscopic spine surgery: the second generation

Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) has evolved for treatment of a variety of spinal disorders. Early incorporation with image-guided surgery (IGS) was challenged due to reproducibility and adaptability, limiting the procedure's acceptance. In the present study, the authors report their experience with second-generation IGS and VATS technologies for anterior thoracic minimally invasive spinal (MIS) procedures. The surgical procedure is described in detail including operating room set-up, patient positioning (a lateral decubitus position), placement of the spinal reference frame and portal, radiographic localization, registration, surgical instruments, and the image-guided thoracoscopic discectomy. Combined IGS and VATS procedures were successfully performed and assisted in anatomical localization in 14 patients. The mean patient age was 59 years (range 32-73 years). Disc herniation pathology represented the most common indication for surgery (n = 8 patients); intrathoracic spinal tumors were present in 4 patients and the remaining patients had infection and ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament. All patients required chest tube drainage postoperatively, and all but 1 patient had drainage discontinued the following day. The only complication was a seroma that was presumed to be due to steroid therapy for postoperative weakness. At the final follow-up, 11 of the patients were improved neurologically, 2 patients had baseline neurological status, and the 1 patient with postoperative weakness was able to ambulate, albeit with an assistive device. The evolution of thoracoscopic surgical procedures occurring over 20 years is presented, including their limitations. The combination of VATS and IGS technologies is discussed including their safety and the importance of 3D imaging. In cases of large open thoracotomy procedures, surgeries require difficult, extensive, and invasive access through the chest cavity; using a MIS procedure can potentially eliminate many of the complications and morbidities associated with large open procedures. The authors report their experience with thoracic spinal surgeries that involved MIS procedures and the new technologies. The most significant advance in IGS procedures has resulted from intraoperative CT scanning and automatic registration with the IGS workstation. Image guidance can be used in conjunction with VATS techniques for thoracic discectomy, spinal tumors, infection, and ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament. The authors' initial experience has revealed this technique to be useful and potentially applicable to other MIS procedures.

Image Registration for Quantitative Parametric Response Mapping of Cancer Treatment Response

Imaging biomarkers capable of early quantification of tumor response to therapy would provide an opportunity to individualize patient care. Image registration of longitudinal scans provides a method of detecting treatment-associated changes within heterogeneous tumors by monitoring alterations in the quantitative value of individual voxels over time, which is unattainable by traditional volumetric-based histogram methods. The concepts involved in the use of image registration for tracking and quantifying breast cancer treatment response using parametric response mapping (PRM), a voxel-based analysis of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) scans, are presented. Application of PRM to breast tumor response detection is described, wherein robust registration solutions for tracking small changes in water diffusivity in breast tumors during therapy are required. Methodologies that employ simulations are presented for measuring expected statistical accuracy of PRM for response assessment. Test-retest clinical scans are used to yield estimates of system noise to indicate significant changes in voxel-based changes in water diffusivity. Overall, registration-based PRM image analysis provides significant opportunities for voxel-based image analysis to provide the required accuracy for early assessment of response to treatment in breast cancer patients receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

Towards local progression estimation of pulmonary emphysema using CT

Whole lung densitometry on chest CT images is an accepted method for measuring tissue destruction in patients with pulmonary emphysema in clinical trials. Progression measurement is required for evaluation of change in health condition and the effect of drug treatment. Information about the location of emphysema progression within the lung may be important for the correct interpretation of drug efficacy, or for determining a treatment plan. The purpose of this study is therefore to develop and validate methods that enable the local measurement of lung density changes, which requires proper modeling of the effect of respiration on density. Four methods, all based on registration of baseline and follow-up chest CT scans, are compared. The first naïve method subtracts registered images. The second employs the so-called dry sponge model, where volume correction is performed using the determinant of the Jacobian of the transformation. The third and the fourth introduce a novel adaptation of the dry sponge model that circumvents its constant-mass assumption, which is shown to be invalid. The latter two methods require a third CT scan at a different inspiration level to estimate the patient-specific density-volume slope, where one method employs a global and the other a local slope. The methods were validated on CT scans of a phantom mimicking the lung, where mass and volume could be controlled. In addition, validation was performed on data of 21 patients with pulmonary emphysema. The image registration method was optimized leaving a registration error below half the slice increment (median 1.0 mm). The phantom study showed that the locally adapted slope model most accurately measured local progression. The systematic error in estimating progression, as measured on the phantom data, was below 2 gr/l for a 70 ml (6%) volume difference, and 5 gr/l for a 210 ml (19%) difference, if volume correction was applied. On the patient data an underlying linearity assumption relating lung volume change with density change was shown to hold (fitR(2) = 0.94), and globalized versions of the local models are consistent with global results (R(2) of 0.865 and 0.882 for the two adapted slope models, respectively). In conclusion, image matching and subsequent analysis of differences according to the proposed lung models (i) has good local registration accuracy on patient data, (ii) effectively eliminates a dependency on inspiration level at acquisition time, (iii) accurately predicts progression in phantom data, and (iv) is reasonably consistent with global results in patient data. It is therefore a potential future tool for assessing local emphysema progression in drug evaluation trials and in clinical practice.

Reduced-dose patient to baseline CT rigid registration in 3D Radon space.

We present a new method for rigid registration of CT scans in Radon space. The inputs are the two 3D Radon transforms of the CT scans, one densely sampled and the other sparsely sampled. The output s the rigid transformation that best matches them. The algorithm starts by finding the best matching between each direction vector in the sparse transform and the corresponding direction vector in the dense transform. It then solves the system of linear equations derived from the direction vector pairs. Our method can be used to register two CT scans and to register a baseline scan to the patient with reduced-dose scanning without compromising registration accuracy. Our preliminary simulation results on the Shepp-Logan head phantom dataset and a pair of clinical head CT scans indicates that our 3D Radon space rigid registration method performs significantly better than image-based registration for very few scan angles and comparably for densely-sampled scans.

Surface-based automatic coarse registration of head scans.

Surface registration is widely used in image-guided neurosurgery to achieve spatial registration between the patient space and the image space. Coarse registration, followed by fine registration, is an important premise to ensure the robustness and efficiency of surface registration. In this paper, a coarse registration algorithm based on the principal axes is proposed to achieve this goal. The extraction of the principal axes relies on the approximated surface with an adaptive Gaussian kernel, the width of which is consistent with neighborhood relation so that it is applicable for various scanning data. Determining the corresponding centers of translation is another problem for aligning different scanning data, which is solved through heuristics. Six pairs of points on two surfaces with the farthest projections on the principal axes were regarded as the candidates of translation centers, and then through tentative alignments of local regions around them, a pair of candidates with the minimum registration error was selected as the optimal translation centers. Automatic registration of two scans of a head phantom is presented in this paper. Experimental results confirmed the robustness of the algorithm and its feasibility in clinical applications.

A High-Precision Registration Technology Based on Bundle Adjustment in Structured Light Scanning System

The multiview 3D data registration precision will decrease with the increasing number of registrations when measuring a large scale object using structured light scanning. In this paper, we propose a high-precision registration method based on multiple view geometry theory in order to solve this problem. First, a multiview network is constructed during the scanning process. The bundle adjustment method from digital close range photogrammetry is used to optimize the multiview network to obtain high-precision global control points. After that, the 3D data under each local coordinate of each scan are registered with the global control points. The method overcomes the error accumulation in the traditional registration process and reduces the time consumption of the following 3D data global optimization. The multiview 3D scan registration precision and efficiency are increased. Experiments verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Oscillation and Transition Tests for Synchronous Sequential Circuits

In this brief, we propose an oscillation-ring test methodology for synchronous sequential circuits under the scan test environment. This approach provides the following features: 1) it is at-speed testing, which makes delay defects detectable; 2) the automatic test pattern generation is much easier, and the test set is usually smaller; and 3) test responses are directly observable at primary outputs and, thus, it greatly reduces the communication bandwidth between the automatic test equipment and the circuit under test. A modified scan register design supporting the oscillation-ring test is presented and an effective oscillation test generation algorithm for the proposed test scheme is given. Experimental results on LGSyn91 benchmarks show that the proposed test method achieves high fault coverage with a smaller number of test vectors.

2D-Laser Scan Registration Using Multi-Scale NDT with Polar Scan Clustering

Scan registration plays an important role in robotics. The problem is to figure out the optimal transformation between two frames of data points, reference points and scene points. One approach to perform this task is using Normal Distribution Transform (NDT). The concept of NDT is to convert reference point cloud into Gaussian mixture distribution and then match scene points with this distribution. Nevertheless, this approach is likely to suffer from local optimum problem especially when the initial transformation error is large. Therefore, in recent researches, multi-scale registration technique is applied. In this work, multi-scale registration can be achieved by using polar scan clustering with different degree of separations. In registration problem, polar scan clustering has advantage over other clustering approaches because it is aware of the fact that the structure of data obtained from laser range finder is sorted by measured angle. To evaluate the performance of our approach, the experiment is conducted to compare transformation error resulted from our approach and a recent approach. As a result, the result from the proposed approach is better than the recent one significantly.

Regional 3D superimposition to assess temporomandibular joint condylar morphology

To investigate the reliability of regional three-dimensional registration and superimposition methods for assessment of temporomandibular joint condylar morphology across subjects and longitudinally. The sample consisted of cone beam CT scans of 36 patients. The across-subject comparisons included 12 controls, mean age 41.3 ± 12.0 years, and 12 patients with temporomandibular joint osteoarthritis, mean age 41.3 ± 14.7 years. The individual longitudinal assessments included 12 patients with temporomandibular joint osteoarthritis, mean age 37.8 ± 16.7 years, followed up at pre-operative jaw surgery, immediately after and one-year post-operative. Surface models of all condyles were constructed from the cone beam CT scans. Two previously calibrated observers independently performed all registration methods. A landmark-based approach was used for the registration of across-subject condylar models, and temporomandibular joint osteoarthritis vs control group differences were computed with shape analysis. A voxel-based approach was used for registration of longitudinal scans calculated x, y, z degrees of freedom for translation and rotation. Two-way random intraclass correlation coefficients tested the interobserver reliability. Statistically significant differences between the control group and the osteoarthritis group were consistently located on the lateral and medial poles for both observers. The interobserver differences were ≤0.2 mm. For individual longitudinal comparisons, the mean interobserver differences were ≤0.6 mm in translation errors and 1.2° in rotation errors, with excellent reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient >0.75). Condylar registration for across-subjects and longitudinal assessments is reliable and can be used to quantify subtle bony differences in the three-dimensional condylar morphology.

RANSAC approach for automated registration of terrestrial laser scans using linear features

Abstract. The registration process of terrestrial laser scans (TLS) targets the problem of how to combine several laser scans in order to attain better information about features than what could be obtained through single scan. The main goal of the registration process is to estimate the parameters which determine geometrical variation between the origins of datasets collected from different locations. Scale, shifts, and rotation parameters are usually used to describe such variation. This paper presents a framework for the registration of overlapping terrestrial laser scans by establishing an automatic matching strategy that uses 3D linear features. More specifically, invariant separation characteristics between 3D linear features extracted from laser scans will be used to establish hypothesized conjugate linear features between the laser scans. These candidate matches are then used to geo-reference scans relative to a common reference frame. The registration workflow simulates the well-known RANndom Sample Consensus method (RANSAC) for determining the registration parameters, whereas the iterative closest projected point (ICPP) is utilized to determine the most probable solution of the transformation parameters from several solutions. The experimental results prove that the proposed methodology can be used for the automatic registration of terrestrial laser scans using linear features.

High precision target center determination from a point cloud

Abstract. Many applications of terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) require the determination of a specific point from a point cloud. In this paper procedure of high precision planar target center acquisition from point cloud is presented. The process is based on an image matching algorithm but before we can deal with raster image to fit a target on it, we need to properly determine the best fitting plane and project points on it. The main emphasis of this paper is in the precision estimation and propagation through the whole procedure which allows us to obtain precision assessment of final results (target center coordinates). Theoretic precision estimations – obtained through the procedure were rather high so we compared them with the empiric precision estimations obtained as standard deviations of results of 60 independently scanned targets. An χ2-test confirmed that theoretic precisions are overestimated. The problem most probably lies in the overestimated precisions of the plane parameters due to vast redundancy of points. However, empirical precisions also confirmed that the proposed procedure can ensure a submillimeter precision level. The algorithm can automatically detect grossly erroneous results to some extent. It can operate when the incidence angles of a laser beam are as high as 80°, which is desirable property if one is going to use planar targets as tie points in scan registration. The proposed algorithm will also contribute to improve TLS calibration procedures.

A Measure for Characterizing Sliding on Lung Boundaries

The lobes of the lung slide relative to each other during breathing. Quantifying lobar sliding can aid in better understanding lung function, better modeling of lung dynamics, and for studying phenomenon such as pleural adhesion. We propose a novel measure to characterize lobe sliding in the lung based on the displacement field obtained from image registration of CT scans. When two sliding lobes are modeled as a continuum, the discontinuity in the displacement field at the fissure will manifest as elevated maximum shear--the proposed measure--which is capable of capturing both the level and orientation of sliding. Six human lungs were analyzed using scans spanning functional residual capacity to total lung capacity. The lung lobes were segmented and registered on a lobe-by-lobe basis to obtain the displacement field from which the proposed sliding measure was calculated. The sliding measure was found to be insignificant in the parenchyma, as relatively little tissue shear occurs here. On the other hand, it was elevated along the fissures. Thus, a map of the proposed sliding measure of the entire lung clearly delineates and quantifies sliding between lung lobes. Sliding is a key aspect of lung deformation during breathing. The proposed measure may help resolve artifacts introduced by sliding in deformation analysis techniques used for radiotherapy.

Physiological variation of segmented OCT retinal layer thicknesses is short-lasting

The application of spectral domain optical coherence tomography as a surrogate for neurodegeneration in a range of neurological disorders demands better understanding of the physiological variation of retinal layer thicknesses, which may mask any value of this emerging outcome measure. A prospective study compared retinal layer thicknesses between control subjects (n = 15) and runners (n = 27) participating in a 10-km charity run. Three scans were performed using an eye-tracking function (EBF) and automated scan registration for optimal precision at (1) baseline, (2) directly after the run, and (3) following a rehydration period. Retinal layer segmentation was performed with suppression of axial retinal vessel signal artifacts. Following the run, there was an increase in the relative retinal nerve fibre layer (p = 0.018), the combined inner plexiform/ganglion cell layer (p = 0.038), and the outer nuclear layer (p = 0.018) in runners compared to controls. The initial increase of thickness in the outer nuclear layer of runners (p < 0.0001) was likely related to (noncompliant) rehydration during exercise. Following a period of rest and rehydration, the difference in thickness change for all retinal layers, except the retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) (p < 0.05), disappeared between the two groups. There is a quantifiable change in the axial thickness of retinal layersthat which can be explained by an increase in the cellular volume. This effect may potentially be caused by H2O volume shifts.

Registration accuracy and image quality of time averaged mid-position CT scans for liver SBRT

Purpose and backgroundThe purpose was to validate the accuracy of motion models derived from deformable registration from four-dimensional computed tomography (4DCT) and breath-hold contrast enhanced computed tomography (BHCCT) scans for liver SBRT. Additionally, the image quality of the time averaged mid-position (MidP) CT constructed using the detected motion model was assessed. Materials and methods4DCT and BHCCT liver scans of 11 patients were acquired with 1 or 2 fiducial markers. Using parametric sampling the markers were digitally removed. Phase-based optical flow was used to register the 4D frames and the BHCCT, and create MidP data. We compared the deformable registration of the markerless scans with the actual displacement of the markers to assess registration accuracy. The noise levels of the MidP scans were compared to those of the 4DCT and BHCCT data. ResultsWe found an average misregistration of 1.8mm (±0.5mm). The constructed MidPCT scan contained around three times less noise than the original 4D scan. The residual error between the MidPCT and the BHCCT was 3.0mm (±0.9mm). ConclusionsHigh precision deformable image registration of 4DCT and BHCCT liver cancer patients was achieved and used to create motion compensated MidPCT scans, with increased contrast-to-noise (CNR) levels. This improved visualisation of tumours and anatomy, facilitates radiotherapy treatment planning.

Polar-Cartesian Hybrid Transforms: A novel 2D range scan registration algorithm

Registration of range scans is commonly required in many localization and mapping algorithms. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach called Polar-Cartesian Hybrid Transforms for pair-wise registration of range scans. The proposed algorithm iteratively establishes correspondences by searching the points with closest polar angles in the polar coordinate frame. An angular look-up table is constructed based on the properties of the laser range finder to accelerate the searching procedure. In order to speed up the convergence, we compute the difference of polar range of every matched point pair to select the most contributing correspondences. After the correspondences are determined, the transformation is computed in Cartesian coordinate frame using a point-to-line metric. Combining the advantages of the polar and Cartesian coordinate frames, both robustness and efficiency are greatly improved compared with an up-to-date ICP algorithm.

Complementing TLS Point Clouds by Dense Image Matching

The complementation of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) by photogrammetric acquisition techniques enables the exploitation of two different measurement principles. TLS with distance measurements can be used for acquiring large-scale point clouds at medium range distances, while image-based surface reconstruction methods enable flexible acquisition with high precision at short distances. Within this paper, an automatic procedure for the combination of photogrammetry and laser scanning is presented. Synthetic images derived from the laser scanning point clouds are used together with camera images in a common Structure-from-Motion (SfM) process. This enables an automatic registration of multiple laser scans. Furthermore, surface information can also be derived from the imagery using dense image matching methods. While the laser scanning data provides the missing scale information, the imagery can complement the dataset to fill gaps, occlusions or to resolve small details. Consequently, large datasets can be connected by registering imagery and laser scans.

OMNIDIRECTIONAL PERCEPTION FOR LIGHTWEIGHT UAVS USING A CONTINUOUSLY ROTATING 3D LASER SCANNER

Abstract. Many popular unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are restricted in their size and weight, making the design of sensory systems for these robots challenging. We designed a small and lightweight continuously rotating 3D laser scanner – allowing for environment perception in a range of 30 m in almost all directions. This sensor it well suited for applications such as 3D obstacle detection, 6D motion estimation, localization, and mapping. We aggregate the distance measurements in a robot-centric grid-based map. To estimate the motion of our multicopter, we register 3D laser scans towards this local map. In experiments, we compare the laser-based ego-motion estimate with ground-truth from a motion capture system. Overall, we can build an accurate 3D obstacle map and can estimate the vehicle's trajectory by 3D scan registration.

Effect of Optical Coherence Tomography Scan Decentration on Macular Center Subfield Thickness Measurements

To investigate the effect of optical coherence tomography macular grid displacement on retinal thickness measurements. SD-OCT macular scans of 66 eyes with various retinal thicknesses were selected. Decentration of the 1-, 3-, 6-mm-diameter macular grid was simulated by manually adjusting the distance between center of the fovea (cFovea) and center of the grid (cGrid). Center subfield thickness (CSF) between the internal limiting membrane and the top of the retinal pigment epithelium was measured along the displacement distance where the grid was displaced in eight cardinal directions from the cFovea in steps of 100 μm within the central 1-mm subfield and then by 200 μm within the inner subfields. One-way/mixed-effects repeated-measures ANOVA models were used to determine changes of CSF (ΔCSF) as a function of displacement distance (for α = 0.05, power = 0.80 and effect size = 0.1). The interactions between the displacement distance and direction, center point thickness (CPT), and foveal contour were also analyzed. The CSF measurement showed statistically significant error when the displacement distance between cFovea and cGrid exceeded 200 μm. The direction of displacement did not affect the ΔCSF-distance relationship, while the CPT and foveal contour significantly affected the relationship, in that some subgroups showed slightly larger tolerance in the displacement distance up to 300 μm before reaching significant ΔCSF. Small displacement distances of the macular grid from the cFovea affect CSF measurements throughout a broad range of thicknesses and retinal contour alterations from disease. Accurate registration of OCT scans or post hoc repositioning of the grid is essential to optimize CSF accuracy.

MO‐F‐WAB‐10: Evaluation of Scan Time Required for Motion Tracking in Four‐Dimensional Cone Beam CT Using Patient Data Sets

Purpose: Applying four‐dimensional cone beam CT in a radiation treatment setting requires a tradeoff between image quality and scan time. The aim of this study is to assess the minimum scan time required to determine the motion of tumors immediately prior to radiation treatment. Methods: Long CBCT scans of approximately 10 minutes were taken from 11 patients with lung lesions. Shorter scan times (down to about 1 minute) for these patients were simulated by removing projections. Four dimensional images were created from each full and simulated scan time using a ROI based FDK reconstruction algorithm with 8 breathing phases. Tumor motion for each phase relative to the first phase was determined through deformable image registration in a region of interest. The ability to track motion was assessed by comparing the results of the image registration of the simulated scans to the results for the full data scan. Results: For each comparison between the full data set and a reduced data set, a root‐mean‐square error was calculated comparing the two motions on a phase by phase basis, with the summation being over the phases. As anticipated, the RMS error as well as the spread in the RMS error increased with decreasing scan time. Good tumor tracking was observed down to 2 minute scan times (RMS error = 1.9 ± 0.6 mm), while 1 minute scan times demonstrated a large spread in the error (RMS error = 2.4 ± 1.8 mm). Conclusion: This study suggests scan times down to two minutes are sufficient for the extraction of tumor motion trajectories from 4D CBCT images. Additionally, this study sets up the ability to compare other reconstruction methods to the traditional FDK method.

Accuracy evaluation of CatalystTM, a 3d surface imaging device designed for set up guidance and on-line target monitoring for tomotherapy treatments

Introduction Highly conformal helical treatments require a daily MV image for patient repositioning. Additional dose related to MV image guidance is evaluated at 1 to 3cGy per fraction. Over the last years, non-irradiant optical imaging technics have been developed such as Catalyst TM . This system designed for handling patient positioning and intra-fraction motion detection is based on principles of photogrammetry and optical triangulation. With knowledge of the surface movements, a volumetric deformable model is used to predict the influence on the actual target position. Our study aims to compare accuracy of Catalyst TM system against MVCT one and to develop an efficient procedure for clinical routine. Material and methods In this study, repositioning deviations were measured by Catalyst TM on 2 groups of 10 patients treated by Tomotherapy, for pelvic and thoracic locations. For each patient, positioning accuracy using Catalyst TM was evaluated comparing deviations calculated by Catalyst TM to MVCT versus reference scan registration results. Regarding to the validation of the on-line tracking, deviations between pre- and post-treatment images were compared against the results of the on-line motion tracking system. Systematic residual error was also investigated and quantified using a thoracic phantom. Results A clinical efficient procedure has been developed for surface image acquisition. The process takes less than 5 min per treatment fraction. Mean deviations for patient setup between MVCT and Catalyst TM system obtained for 2 patients during 3 fractions are: 2.5 mm in left-right direction, 2.8 mm in cranio-caudal direction, 3.8 mm in antero-posterior and less than 1.5° for all rotations. Conclusion This study will allow us to determine localization that benefits the most of Catalyst TM 3D surface imaging device and for which it may be possible to avoid MV daily imaging keeping the same PTV margins.