Three-Dimensional Nonrigid MR-TRUS Registration Using Dual Optimization

In this study, we proposed an efficient nonrigid magnetic resonance (MR) to transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) deformable registration method in order to improve the accuracy of targeting suspicious regions during a three dimensional (3-D) TRUS guided prostate biopsy. The proposed deformable registration approach employs the multi-channel modality independent neighborhood descriptor (MIND) as the local similarity feature across the two modalities of MR and TRUS, and a novel and efficient duality-based convex optimization-based algorithmic scheme was introduced to extract the deformations and align the two MIND descriptors. The registration accuracy was evaluated using 20 patient images by calculating the TRE using manually identified corresponding intrinsic fiducials in the whole gland and peripheral zone. Additional performance metrics [Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), mean absolute surface distance (MAD), and maximum absolute surface distance (MAXD)] were also calculated by comparing the MR and TRUS manually segmented prostate surfaces in the registered images. Experimental results showed that the proposed method yielded an overall median TRE of 1.76 mm. The results obtained in terms of DSC showed an average of 80.8±7.8% for the apex of the prostate, 92.0±3.4% for the mid-gland, 81.7±6.4% for the base and 85.7±4.7% for the whole gland. The surface distance calculations showed an overall average of 1.84±0.52 mm for MAD and 6.90±2.07 mm for MAXD.