Abstract. Our paper summarizes experiments for measuring the accuracy of deformable 2D-3D registration between sets of simulated x-ray images (DRR's) and a statistical shape model of the pelvis bones, which includes x-ray attenuation information ("density"). In many surgical scenarios, the images contain a truncated view of the pelvis anatomy. Our work specifically addresses this problem by examining different selections of truncated views as target images. Our atlas is derived by applying principal component analysis to a population of up to 110 instance shapes. The experiments measure the registration error with a large and truncated FOV. A typical accuracy of about 2 mm is achieved in the 2D-3D registration, compared with about 1.4 mm of an "optimal" 3D-3D registration.

Abstract. We present an iterative bootstrapping framework to create and analyze statistical atlases of bony anatomy such as the human pelvis from a large collection of CT data sets. We create an initial tetrahedral mesh representation of the target anatomy and use deformable intensitybased registration to create an initial atlas. This atlas is used as prior information to assist in deformable registration/segmentation of our subject image data sets, and the process is iterated several times to remove any bias from the initial choice of template subject and to improve the stability and consistency of mean shape and variational modes. We also present a framework to validate the statistical models. Using this method, we have created a statistical atlas of full pelvis anatomy with 110 healthy patient CT scans. Our analysis shows that any given pelvis shape can be approximated up to an average accuracy of 1.5036 mm using the first 15 principal modes of variation. Although a particular intensity-based deformable registration algorithm was used to produce these results, we believe that the basic method may be adapted readily for use with any registration method with broadly similar characteristics.

We propose a method for improving the quality of cone-beam tomographic reconstruction done with a C-arm. C-arm scans frequently suffer from incomplete information due to image truncation, limited scan length, or other limitations. Our proposed "hybrid reconstruction" method injects information from a prior anatomical model, derived from a subject-specific CT or from a statistical database (atlas), where the C-arm x-ray data is missing. This significantly reduces reconstruction artifacts with little loss of true information from the x-ray projections. The methods consist of constructing anatomical models, fast rendering of digitally reconstructed radiograph (DRR) projections of the models, rigid or deformable registration of the model and the x-ray images, and fusion of the DRR and x-ray projections, all prior to a conventional filtered backprojection algorithm. Our experiments, conducted with a mobile image intensifier C-arm, demonstrate visually and quantitatively the contribution of data fusion to image quality, which we assess through comparison to a "ground truth" CT. Importantly, we show that a significantly improved reconstruction can be obtained from a C-arm scan as short as 90° by complementing the observed projections with DRRs of two prior models, namely an atlas and a pre-operative samepatient CT. The hybrid reconstruction principles are applicable to other types of C-arms as well.

We present a method to improve the quality of cone-beam tomographic images computed from an intra-operative C-arm scan by adding information from an anatomical atlas. Limited range of C-arm view angles leads to reconstruction artifacts and poor anatomical detail. We propose to complete the missing views with simulated projections of a statistical anatomical model, which is deformably registered to match the data in the C-arm images. This paper presents the methods used to create the atlas and to register it with x-ray images. We compare the results of seven leave-one-out simulated hybrid reconstruction tests on a population of 13 subjects, with "ground-truth" CT, a classical short-scan, and a partial-scan reconstruction.

The stereo vision system presented is a precise and robust system to measure brain shift and pulsatility with an accuracy superior to other reported systems.