Incorporation of a Variational Registration Method into a Spectroscopy Tool

This work describes the incorporation of a variational image registration algorithm into an interactive medical tool to support clin- ical decision about treatment of brain pathologies. Through the com- bination of anatomical (Magnetic Resonance Images, MRI), functional (Positron Emission Tomography, PET) and molecular images (Chem- ical Shift Imaging, CSI) clinicians can determine the best therapeutic strategy in every case. First, MRI images and CSI are co-registered and analysed in order to create colour maps related with the concentration of metabolites in the brain. Then, PET and MRI are also registered since it allows knowing the metabolic functionality of the brain. The improve- ment of the Correlation Ratio (CR), the Structural SIMilarity (SSIM) and the Mutual Information (MI) shows the performance of the varia- tional registration method which is at least two times faster than other approaches in the spatial domain. The goal of this tool is to provide surgeons as much information as possible to perform biopsies and/or surgeries.