A Review of Ultrasound and Computed Tomography Registration Approaches

Ultrasound is widely used in minimally invasive cardiac procedures due to its convenience of use and noninvasive nature. However, the low quality of ultrasound images often limits their utility as a means for guiding procedures, since it is often difficult to relate the images to their anatomical context. To improve the interpretability of the ultrasound images while maintaining ultrasound as a flexible anatomical and functional real time imaging modality, there is need for some registration techniques that integrate them with their correspond context in high quality pre-operative models such as magnetic resonance imaging or computed tomography images. It is a challenging and remarkable step as through registration, the combined information from multi-modal image acquisition systems such as ultrasound and computed tomography can be obtained by the medical practitioner for better physiological understanding, effective image guidance surgery, treatment, monitoring and diagnostic purposes. An overview of ultrasound and computed tomography registration techniques is presented in this paper.