Affiliations: [a] School of Computer Science and Engineering, Soongsil University, Dongjak-Gu, Seoul, Korea | [b] Department of Radiology, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Songpa-ku, Seoul, Korea | [c] Department of Systems Management Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Seobu-ro, Jangan-gu, Suwon-si, Gyeong gi-do, Korea
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Kyoung Won Kim, Department of Radiology and Research Institute of Radiology, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine 388-1, Pungnap-2 dong, Songpa-ku, Seoul 138-736, Korea. Tel.: +82 2 3010 4385; Fax: +82 2 476 4719; E-mail: kimkw@amc.seoul.kr
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Multi-phase CT images are obtained sequentially after
the injection of contrast agents so that there is a large amount of local
deformation between images due to the respiratory and heart motion.
Therefore, a non-rigid registration technique is required in order to
establish the anatomical correspondence between the multi-phase CT images
for liver CAD (computer-aided diagnosis).
OBJECTIVE: In this paper, we propose the automatic detection method of
hepatocellular carcinomas using the non-rigid registration method of
multi-phase CT images.
METHODS: Global movements between multi-phase CT images are aligned by
rigid registration based on normalized mutual information. Local
deformations between multi-phase CT images are modeled by non-rigid
registration based on B-spline deformable model. After the registration of
multi-phase CT images, hepatocellular carcinomas are automatically detected
by analyzing the original and subtraction information of the registered
multi-phase CT images.
RESULTS: We applied our method to twenty five multi-phase CT datasets.
Experimental results showed that the multi-phase CT images were accurately
aligned. All of the hepatocellular carcinomas including small size ones in
our 25 subjects were accurately detected using our method.
CONCLUSION: We conclude that our method is useful for detecting
hepatocellular carcinomas.
