An adaptive patient specific deformable registration for breast images of positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging using finite element approach

Abstract

A patient specific registration model based on finite element method was investigated in this study. Image registration of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Magnetic Resonance imaging (MRI) has been studied a lot. Surface-based registration is extensively applied in medical imaging. We develop and evaluate a registration method combine surface-based registration with biomechanical modeling. .Four sample cases of patients with PET and MRI breast scans performed within 30 days were collected from hospital. K-means clustering algorithm was used to segment images into two parts, which is fat tissue and neoplasm [2]. Instead of placing extrinsic landmarks on patients’ body which may be invasive, we proposed a new boundary condition to simulate breast deformation during two screening. Then a three dimensional model with meshes was built. Material properties were assigned to this model according to previous studies. The whole registration was based on a biomechanical finite element model, which could simulate deformation of breast under pressure.