Image 3D registration in interventional MRI [for thermal ablation of tumors]

We are developing technology for thermal ablation of tumors under interventional MRI guidance. Image registration allows us to quantitatively and visually compare images acquired before, during and after treatment. One manual and two automatic registration methods were evaluated using displacement of anatomical landmarks on clinical and volunteer studies. Manual registration gave an RMS distance error of around 4 mm on points in the middle of the liver. This is sufficiently small to allow the use of image registration in the evaluation of thermal tumor ablation in the liver.