Information
- Publication Type: Master Thesis
- Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
- Date: May 2022
- Date (Start): 3. February 2021
- Date (End): 17. May 2022
- Diploma Examination: 27. June 2022
- Open Access: yes
- First Supervisor: Eduard Gröller
- Pages: 126
- Keywords: Multi-Modal Segmentation, Registration
Abstract
Endometrial cancer is the most common and most lethal gynecologic malignancy world-wide. Multiple MRI sequences are acquired per patient in gynecologic cancer research because they reveal different tissue characteristics. Radiomic tumor profiling extracts features from medical imaging data aiming to find new tumor imaging biomarkers. Co-registration and tumor segmentation of multi-sequential MRI data build the base for radiomic tumor profiling. Many approaches exist that aim to automate these time-consuming manual processes. After automatic co-registration, volumes are often still misaligned. This lack of registration quality has an impact on the results of radiomic tumor profiling, since we cannot ensure voxel integrity. We distinguish between rigid and deformable registration. Rigid registration transforms a volume using only translation and rotation parameters, while deformable registration can include local deformations. Tumors are rigid structures compared to the tissue around them. Therefore, rigid co-registration can be sufficient to align tumors. However, to analyze also surrounding structures, deformable registration is necessary. Even though tumors are rigid structures, they can appear slightly different in the varying sequences due to imaging physics. Applying deformable registration to the whole image can result in tumor deformations that do not resemble the underlying biological tissue characteristics and can alter important information about tumor tissue characteristics. To address these two problems, we propose the web-based application MuSIC (Multi-Sequential Interactive Co-registration). The tool allows medical experts to co-register multiple sequences simultaneously based on a pre-defined segmentation mask that has been generated for one of the sequences. In our workflow, a simulated-annealing-based shape matching algorithm searches for the tumor position in each sequence that can vary in translation and rotation parameters. We present the updated segmentation positions to the user, who can interactively adapt the positions if needed. We include multi-modal visualization techniques for visual quality assessment during this procedure. Based on the positioning of the segmentation masks, we register the volumes. We allow for both rigid and deformable co-registration. Due to our approach based on segmentation masks, we apply local transformations mainly outside the tumor tissue in deformable registration. We evaluate our approach in a usability analysis with medical and machine learning experts. They find the tool very intuitive and especially the medical experts clearly see themselves using MuSIC in the future.Additional Files and Images
Weblinks
BibTeX
@mastersthesis{Eichner2022, title = "Interactive Co-Registration for Multi-Modal Cancer Imaging Data based on Segmentation Masks", author = "Tanja Eichner", year = "2022", abstract = "Endometrial cancer is the most common and most lethal gynecologic malignancy world-wide. Multiple MRI sequences are acquired per patient in gynecologic cancer research because they reveal different tissue characteristics. Radiomic tumor profiling extracts features from medical imaging data aiming to find new tumor imaging biomarkers. Co-registration and tumor segmentation of multi-sequential MRI data build the base for radiomic tumor profiling. Many approaches exist that aim to automate these time-consuming manual processes. After automatic co-registration, volumes are often still misaligned. This lack of registration quality has an impact on the results of radiomic tumor profiling, since we cannot ensure voxel integrity. We distinguish between rigid and deformable registration. Rigid registration transforms a volume using only translation and rotation parameters, while deformable registration can include local deformations. Tumors are rigid structures compared to the tissue around them. Therefore, rigid co-registration can be sufficient to align tumors. However, to analyze also surrounding structures, deformable registration is necessary. Even though tumors are rigid structures, they can appear slightly different in the varying sequences due to imaging physics. Applying deformable registration to the whole image can result in tumor deformations that do not resemble the underlying biological tissue characteristics and can alter important information about tumor tissue characteristics. To address these two problems, we propose the web-based application MuSIC (Multi-Sequential Interactive Co-registration). The tool allows medical experts to co-register multiple sequences simultaneously based on a pre-defined segmentation mask that has been generated for one of the sequences. In our workflow, a simulated-annealing-based shape matching algorithm searches for the tumor position in each sequence that can vary in translation and rotation parameters. We present the updated segmentation positions to the user, who can interactively adapt the positions if needed. We include multi-modal visualization techniques for visual quality assessment during this procedure. Based on the positioning of the segmentation masks, we register the volumes. We allow for both rigid and deformable co-registration. Due to our approach based on segmentation masks, we apply local transformations mainly outside the tumor tissue in deformable registration. We evaluate our approach in a usability analysis with medical and machine learning experts. They find the tool very intuitive and especially the medical experts clearly see themselves using MuSIC in the future.", month = may, pages = "126", address = "Favoritenstrasse 9-11/E193-02, A-1040 Vienna, Austria", school = "Research Unit of Computer Graphics, Institute of Visual Computing and Human-Centered Technology, Faculty of Informatics, TU Wien", keywords = "Multi-Modal Segmentation, Registration", URL = "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2022/Eichner2022/", }