Ronald van 't Klooster1, Marius Staring1, Stefan Klein2, Robert Kwee3, Eline Kooi3, Johan Reiber1, Boudewijn Lelieveldt1, Rob van der Geest1
1Division of Image Processing, Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands; 2Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam, Depts. Of Radiology & Medical Informatics, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, Netherlands; 3Department of Radiology, Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht, Maastricht University Medical Center, Maastricht, Netherlands
Patient movement during scanning can cause misalignments between multispectral MR images. Correctly aligned images of the carotid artery are needed to accurately classify plaque components inside the vessel wall. Manual alignment of these images is the current procedure but is time-consuming. Automatic image registration can be applied to correct for these misalignments. Various registration techniques were investigated and quantitatively validated with a gold standard. The results show that automatic image registration using a 3D B-spline transform can replace the manual alignment procedure reducing the amount of time needed analyzing carotid vessel wall images.
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