Software development for X-Ray Fluoroscopy and MR image fusion

Abstract

In interventional radiology, treatment is routinely done under X-Ray Fluoroscopy (XF) using special catheters or needles. XF is a fast modality and allows one to follow the endovascular path with contrast injections and to track devices during the interventions. On the other hand, one of the most important problems in XF imaging is the lack of soft tissue contrast; besides the obvious problem of ionizing radiation. During the intervention, additional soft tissue information could decrease the risk by providing important extra guidance to the surgeon. For instance: in endovascular cardiac interventions, detailed anatomical positions of infarcted segments of the heart could highlight target or weak zones on the myocardial wall. Main goal of this study is to overcome the lack of soft tissue contrast of XF. To achieve this goal soft tissue information gathered from a priori imaging modality is used. MRI is the best candidate with excellent soft tissue contrast and ability to image any cross section in the scanned volume. On the other hand, MRI has de cient features in temporal resolution when compared to XF, instrument compatibility problems with high magnetic and RF elds and limited patient access because of the shape of the magnet bore. Therefore combination of these two modalities all de cient features could be avoided by complementing each other. Combined usage of XF and MRI requires registration of images from both modalities and a reliable software platform is needed for preclinical and clinical studies. In this work, a new implementation of XFM Suite in Extensible Imaging Platform (XIP) software provides all the tools for X-Ray fused with MRI (XFM) clinical studies performed in X-Ray-MRI suites (XMR) with real-time registration and fusion of images.|Keywords : Image-Guided Theraphy, Interventional Radiology, X-Ray Fused with MRI (XFM), Extensible Imaging Platform, Image Fusion, Image Registration