Abstract
Object: This retrospective study compares the anatomical accuracy of automated rigid and non-rigid registration software for aligning data from separately performed X-ray computed tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography with F-18-deoxyglucose (PET).
Materials and methods: Analyses were performed on independently acquired PET and CT data from 40 tumor patients. Rigid as well as non-rigid automated fusion was carried out using the commercially available Mirada 7D platform (MIR and MINR, respectively) as well as a second automated non-rigid registration based on a variational image registration approach (VIR). Distances between lesion representation on PET and CT of 105 malignant lesions were measured in X-, Y-, and Z-directions. Statistical evaluation was performed using mixed effect analysis, comparing separately MIR with MINR and VIR with MINR.
Results: The percentage of lesions misregistered by less than 15 mm varied from 70% for MIR and MINR in Z-direction to 93% for VIR in X-direction. The average X-, Y- and Z-distances ranged between 5.9 ± 5.7 mm for VIR in X-direction and 12.8±9.7 mm for MIR in Z-direction. MINR was significantly more accurate than MIR in Y-direction. Furthermore, VIR aligned thoracic lesions in the X- direction significantly better than MINR.
Conclusion: The accuracy of rigid and non-rigid automated image registration can be expected to be better than 15 mm for the majority of lesions. Alignment tended to be more accurate with non-rigid registration.
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This work was supported by the ELAN-Fonds of the Clinical Faculty of the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (AZ: 04.03.10.1) as well as by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Sonderforschungsbereich 603, Teilprojekt C10.
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Wolz, G., Nömayr, A., Hothorn, T. et al. Comparison of performance between rigid and non-rigid software registering CT to FDG-PET. Int J CARS 2, 183–190 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-007-0128-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-007-0128-y