Model-based registration of ex vivo and in vivo MRI of the prostate using elastography

Registration of histopathology to in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the prostate is an important task that can be used to optimize in vivo imaging for cancer detection. Such registration is challenging due to the change in volume and deformation of the prostate during excision and fixation. One approach towards this problem involves the use of an ex vivo MRI of the excised prostate specimen, followed by in vivo to ex vivo MRI registration of the prostate. We propose a novel registration method that uses a patient-specific biomechanical model acquired using magnetic resonance elastography to deform the in vivo volume and match it to the surface of the ex vivo specimen. The forces that drive the deformations are derived from a region-based energy, with the elastic potential used for regularization. The incorporation of elastography data into the registration framework allows inhomogeneous elasticity to be assigned to the in vivo volume. We show that such inhomogeneity improves the registration results by providing a physical regularization of the deformation map. The method is demonstrated and evaluated on six clinical cases.