SYNTHETIC COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY (CT) IMAGE CREATION USING A GENERALIZED REGISTRATION ERROR (GRE) METRIC

摘要

Described herein are systems and methods for synthetic CT image creation that allow MR-only radiotherapy of cancer patients. The systems and methods involve application of a generalized registration error (GRE) metric that determines the goodness of local registration between MR image pairs. Furthermore, the methods and systems described herein also feature image processing techniques that improve the similarity between CT and MR images prior to CT-MR image registration, as well as standardization of the MR intensity histograms prior to MR-MR registration. Application of the techniques result in more accurate assignment of the Hounsfield unit to each point in the synthetic CT compared to other atlas-based methods, providing for more accurate dosing in MR-only radiotherapy simulation and planning.