Registration of Multiview Echocardiography Sequences Using a Subspace Error Metric

Objective: 3-D$+t$ echocardiography (3DtE) is widely employed for the assessment of left ventricular anatomy and function. However, the information derived from 3DtE images can be affected by the poor image quality and the limited field of view. Registration of multiview 3DtE sequences has been proposed to compound images from different acoustic windows, therefore improving both image quality and coverage. We propose a novel subspace error metric for an automatic and robust registration of multiview intrasubject 3DtE sequences. Methods: The proposed metric employs linear dimensionality reduction to exploit the similarity in the temporal variation of multiview 3DtE sequences. The use of a low-dimensional subspace for the computation of the error metric reduces the influence of image artefacts and noise on the registration optimization, resulting in fast and robust registrations that do not require a starting estimate. Results: The accuracy, robustness, and execution time of the proposed registration were thoroughly validated. Results on 48 pairwise multiview 3DtE registrations show the proposed error metric to outperform a state-of-the-art phase-based error metric, with improvements in median/75th percentile of the target registration error of 21%/31% and an improvement in mean execution time of 45%. Conclusion: The proposed subspace error metric outperforms sum-of-squared differences and phase-based error metrics for the registration of multiview 3DtE sequences in terms of accuracy, robustness, and execution time. Significance: The use of the proposed subspace error metric has the potential to replace standard image error metrics for a robust and automatic registration of multiview 3DtE sequences.