Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Florence, Via di Santa Marta, Florence 3 - 50139, Italy.
Department of Information Engineering, University of Florence, Via di Santa Marta, Florence 3 - 50139, Italy.
Comput Methods Programs Biomed. 2022 Aug;223:106964. doi: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2022.106964. Epub 2022 Jun 20.
In biomedical fields, image analysis is often necessary for an accurate diagnosis. In order to obtain all the information needed to form an in-depth clinical picture, it may be useful to combine the contents of images taken under different diagnostic modes. Multimodal medical image fusion techniques enable complementary information acquired by different imaging devices to be automatically combined into a unique image.
In this paper, multimodal medical images fusion method based on multiresolution analysis (MRA) is proposed, with the aim to combine the high geometric content of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and the elasticity information of magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), simultaneously acquired on the same organs of a patient. First, the slices of MRE are volumetrically interpolated to exactly overlap, each with a slice of MRI. Then, the spatial details of MRI are extracted by means of MRA and injected into the corresponding slices of MRE. Due to the intrinsic dissimilarity between corresponding slices of MRE and MRI, the spatial details of MRI are modulated by local or global matching functions.
The performance of the proposed method is quantitatively assessed considering radiometric and geometric consistency of the fused images with respect to their originals, in a comparison with two popular methods from the literature. For a qualitative evaluation, a visual inspection is carried out.
The results show that the proposed method enables an effective MRI-MRE fusion that allows the elasticity information and geometric details of the examined organs to be evaluated in a single image.
在生物医学领域，图像分析通常是准确诊断所必需的。为了获取形成深入临床图像所需的所有信息，将不同诊断模式下拍摄的图像内容结合起来可能会很有用。多模态医学图像融合技术可将不同成像设备获取的互补信息自动组合成独特的图像。
本文提出了一种基于多分辨率分析（MRA）的多模态医学图像融合方法，旨在结合磁共振成像（MRI）的高几何内容和磁共振弹性成像（MRE）的弹性信息，同时获取同一患者的同一器官。首先，对 MRE 的切片进行体素插值，使其完全重叠，每个切片都与 MRI 切片相对应。然后，通过 MRA 提取 MRI 的空间细节，并将其注入到相应的 MRE 切片中。由于 MRE 和 MRI 的对应切片之间存在固有差异，MRI 的空间细节通过局部或全局匹配函数进行调制。
通过与文献中两种流行方法进行比较，从辐射和几何一致性方面对融合图像的性能进行了定量评估。为了进行定性评估，进行了目视检查。
结果表明，该方法能够实现有效的 MRI-MRE 融合，可在单个图像中评估检查器官的弹性信息和几何细节。
