Non-rigid Multi-modal Registration of Coronary Arteries Using SIFTflow

The fusion of clinically relevant information coming from different image modalities is an important topic in medical imaging. In particular, different cardiac imaging modalities provides complementary information for the physician: Computer Tomography Angiography (CTA) provides reliable pre-operative information on arteries geometry, even in the presence of chronic total occlusions, while X-Ray Angiography (XRA) allows intra-operative high resolution projections of a specific artery. The non-rigid registration of arteries between these two modalities is a difficult task. In this paper we propose the use of SIFTflow, in registering CTA and XRA images. At the best of our knowledge, this paper proposed SIFTflow as a XRay-CTA registration method for the first time in the literature. To highlight the arteries, so to guide the registration process, the well known Vesselness method has been employed. Results confirm that, to the aim of registration, the arteries must be highlighted and background objects removed as much as possible. Moreover, the comparison with the well known Free Form Deformation technique, suggests that SIFTflow has a great potential in the registration of multi-modal medical images.