A Deformable Finite Element Model for Breast Image Registration

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer amongwomen. X-ray mammography is the primary and highlysensitive but not very specific way to screen anddiagnose it and in some cases additional imaging andbiopsies are necessary. It is desirable to have analternative non-invasive method to follow upequivocal or difficult to interpret X-ray mammogramsor any inconclusive breast examination.Tomographic medical imaging modalities such as CTMRI PET and SPECT provide highly specialized andcomplementary information to screen and diagnosebreast cancer. More complete information about thevolumes of interest can be provided by registrationand fusion of multiple image volumes created by different modalities. Therefore image-processingtechniques and algorithms are needed to estimategeometrical differences between 3D scans of the sameregion of interest in different or in the samemodalities and to register them.In this book a new image acquisition and processingprotocol and a method which relies on a finiteelement method deformable breast model and a set offiducial skin markers placed on the breast surfacefor nonrigid 3D breast image registration is presented.