A technical challenge in the registration of dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance (DCE-MR) imaging in the liver is intensity variations caused by contrast agents. Such variations lead to the failure of the traditional intensity-based registration method. To address this problem, a manifold-based registration framework for liver DCE-MR time series is proposed. We assume that liver DCE-MR time series are located on a low-dimensional manifold and determine intrinsic similarities between frames. Based on the obtained manifold, the large deformation of two dissimilar images can be decomposed into a series of small deformations between adjacent images on the manifold through gradual deformation of each frame to the template image along the geodesic path. Furthermore, manifold construction is important in automating the selection of the template image, which is an approximation of the geodesic mean. Robust principal component analysis is performed to separate motion components from intensity changes induced by contrast agents; the components caused by motion are used to guide registration in eliminating the effect of contrast enhancement. Visual inspection and quantitative assessment are further performed on clinical dataset registration. Experiments show that the proposed method effectively reduces movements while preserving the topology of contrast-enhancing structures and provides improved registration performance.
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