Lee Dong-Hoon, Lee Do-Wan, Han Bong-Soo
Division of MR Research, Department of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.
Department of Radiological Science, College of Health Science, Yonsei University, Wonju, Rep. of Korea.
PLoS One. 2016 Apr 11;11(4):e0153043. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0153043. eCollection 2016.
The purpose of this study is an application of scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) algorithm to stitch the cervical-thoracic-lumbar (C-T-L) spine magnetic resonance (MR) images to provide a view of the entire spine in a single image. All MR images were acquired with fast spin echo (FSE) pulse sequence using two MR scanners (1.5 T and 3.0 T). The stitching procedures for each part of spine MR image were performed and implemented on a graphic user interface (GUI) configuration. Moreover, the stitching process is performed in two categories; manual point-to-point (mPTP) selection that performed by user specified corresponding matching points, and automated point-to-point (aPTP) selection that performed by SIFT algorithm. The stitched images using SIFT algorithm showed fine registered results and quantitatively acquired values also indicated little errors compared with commercially mounted stitching algorithm in MRI systems. Our study presented a preliminary validation of the SIFT algorithm application to MRI spine images, and the results indicated that the proposed approach can be performed well for the improvement of diagnosis. We believe that our approach can be helpful for the clinical application and extension of other medical imaging modalities for image stitching.
本研究的目的是应用尺度不变特征变换（SIFT）算法拼接颈胸腰（C-T-L）脊柱磁共振（MR）图像，以便在单幅图像中呈现整个脊柱的视图。所有MR图像均使用两台MR扫描仪（1.5T和3.0T）通过快速自旋回波（FSE）脉冲序列采集。脊柱MR图像各部分的拼接程序在图形用户界面（GUI）配置上进行和实现。此外，拼接过程分为两类：用户指定相应匹配点进行的手动点对点（mPTP）选择，以及由SIFT算法进行的自动点对点（aPTP）选择。与MRI系统中商业安装的拼接算法相比，使用SIFT算法拼接的图像显示出良好的配准结果，定量获取的值也显示出较小的误差。我们的研究对SIFT算法在MRI脊柱图像中的应用进行了初步验证，结果表明所提出的方法在改善诊断方面表现良好。我们相信我们的方法有助于临床应用以及其他医学成像模态图像拼接的扩展。
