SPECT-US image fusion and clinical applications

摘要

Because scintigraphic images lack anatomical information, single photon emission tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography systems (PET) are combined physically with CTs to compensate for this drawback. In our work, we present a method where the CT is replaced by a 3D ultrasound device. Because in this case a mechanical linkage is not possible, we use an additional optical tracking system (OTS) for spatial correlation of the SPECT or PET information and the US. To enable image fusion between the functional SPECT and the anatomical US we first calibrate the SPECT by means of the optical tracking system. This is done by imaging a phantom with SPECT and scanning the surface of the phantom using a calibrated stylus of the OTS. Applying an iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm results in the transformation between the optical coordinate system and the SPECT coordinate system. When a patient undergoes a SPECT scan, a 3D US image is taken immediately after the scan. Since the scan head of the US is also tracked by the OTS, the transformation between OTS and SPECT can be calculated straight forward. For clinical intervention, the patient is again imaged with the US and a 3D/3D registration between the two US volumes allows to transform the functional information of the SPECT to the current US image in real time. We found a mean distance between the point cloud of the optical stylus and the segmented surface of the phantom of 2.3 mm while the maximum distance was found to be 6.9 mm. The 3D3D registration between the two US images was accomplished with an error of 2.1 mm.