10,534 research outputs found
Prostate Biopsy Assistance System with Gland Deformation Estimation for Enhanced Precision
Computer-assisted prostate biopsies became a very active research area during
the last years. Prostate tracking makes it possi- ble to overcome several
drawbacks of the current standard transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) biopsy
procedure, namely the insufficient targeting accuracy which may lead to a
biopsy distribution of poor quality, the very approximate knowledge about the
actual location of the sampled tissues which makes it difficult to implement
focal therapy strategies based on biopsy results, and finally the difficulty to
precisely reach non-ultrasound (US) targets stemming from different modalities,
statistical atlases or previous biopsy series. The prostate tracking systems
presented so far are limited to rigid transformation tracking. However, the
gland can get considerably deformed during the intervention because of US probe
pres- sure and patient movements. We propose to use 3D US combined with
image-based elastic registration to estimate these deformations. A fast elastic
registration algorithm that copes with the frequently occurring US shadows is
presented. A patient cohort study was performed, which yielded a statistically
significant in-vivo accuracy of 0.83+-0.54mm.Comment: This version of the paper integrates a correction concerning the
local similarity measure w.r.t. the proceedings (this typing error could not
be corrected before editing the proceedings
A fast and robust patient specific Finite Element mesh registration technique: application to 60 clinical cases
Finite Element mesh generation remains an important issue for patient
specific biomechanical modeling. While some techniques make automatic mesh
generation possible, in most cases, manual mesh generation is preferred for
better control over the sub-domain representation, element type, layout and
refinement that it provides. Yet, this option is time consuming and not suited
for intraoperative situations where model generation and computation time is
critical. To overcome this problem we propose a fast and automatic mesh
generation technique based on the elastic registration of a generic mesh to the
specific target organ in conjunction with element regularity and quality
correction. This Mesh-Match-and-Repair (MMRep) approach combines control over
the mesh structure along with fast and robust meshing capabilities, even in
situations where only partial organ geometry is available. The technique was
successfully tested on a database of 5 pre-operatively acquired complete femora
CT scans, 5 femoral heads partially digitized at intraoperative stage, and 50
CT volumes of patients' heads. The MMRep algorithm succeeded in all 60 cases,
yielding for each patient a hex-dominant, Atlas based, Finite Element mesh with
submillimetric surface representation accuracy, directly exploitable within a
commercial FE software
Phenomenological model of diffuse global and regional atrophy using finite-element methods
The main goal of this work is the generation of ground-truth data for the validation of atrophy measurement techniques, commonly used in the study of neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia. Several techniques have been used to measure atrophy in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, but it is extremely difficult to compare their performance since they have been applied to different patient populations. Furthermore, assessment of performance based on phantom measurements or simple scaled images overestimates these techniques' ability to capture the complexity of neurodegeneration of the human brain. We propose a method for atrophy simulation in structural magnetic resonance (MR) images based on finite-element methods. The method produces cohorts of brain images with known change that is physically and clinically plausible, providing data for objective evaluation of atrophy measurement techniques. Atrophy is simulated in different tissue compartments or in different neuroanatomical structures with a phenomenological model. This model of diffuse global and regional atrophy is based on volumetric measurements such as the brain or the hippocampus, from patients with known disease and guided by clinical knowledge of the relative pathological involvement of regions and tissues. The consequent biomechanical readjustment of structures is modelled using conventional physics-based techniques based on biomechanical tissue properties and simulating plausible tissue deformations with finite-element methods. A thermoelastic model of tissue deformation is employed, controlling the rate of progression of atrophy by means of a set of thermal coefficients, each one corresponding to a different type of tissue. Tissue characterization is performed by means of the meshing of a labelled brain atlas, creating a reference volumetric mesh that will be introduced to a finite-element solver to create the simulated deformations. Preliminary work on the simulation of acquisition artefa- - cts is also presented. Cross-sectional and
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