Image registration for abdominal dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance images

A simple, computationally inexpensive, algorithm for performing registration of abdominal dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI data is presented. It utilizes an intensity correction term in conjunction with a so-called floating reference image scheme to reduce the effects of contrast agent related intensity changes on registration performance. Using an abdominal DCE-MRI dataset with simulated motion, it is shown that the algorithm is capable of correcting for non-rigid motion of various magnitudes. The registration also helped to elucidate trends in the enhancement curve of a small region of interest within a renal tumour of a dataset with un-simulated motion. In all cases, evidence of visual motion was almost entirely eliminated after registration. Since the algorithm does not involve altering image registration optimization processes, it is predicted that it should be easily adapted to other registration frameworks.