Image Enhancement in Digital X-Ray Angiography

Image Enhancement in Digital X-Ray Angiography Erik Meijering Colophon This book was typeset by the author using LATEX2ε. The main body of the text was set using a 10-points Computer Modern Roman font. All graphics and images were included formatted as Encapsulated PostScript (TM Adobe Systems Incorporated). The final PostScript output was converted to Portable Document Format (PDF) and transferred to film for printing. Cover design by the author using CorelDRAW (TM Corel Corporation) version 8. The background is a colored fragment of a slice taken from a clinical 3DRA dataset. The graphics on the front cover symbolically represent the contents of the different chapters: the vector field (in red) refers to the problem of patient motion registration and correction in DSA, addressed in Chapters 2, 3, and 4; the circles and arrows (in green) represent the tasks of visualization and subsequent quantification of blood vessels and their anomalies in 3DRA images, which constitute the subject of Chapter 5; finally, the plot (in blue) portrays the realization of the sinc-like kernel implicitly used in cu- bic spline interpolation, which according to the results of the comparative evaluation study described in Chapter 6 is the method of choice for geometrical transformation of medical image data. Copyright c 2000 by Erik Meijering. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. ISBN 90-393-2500-6 Printed by Ponsen & Looijen, Wageningen. Image Enhancement in Digital X-Ray Angiography Beeldverbetering in Digitale Röntgenangiografie (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, Prof. Dr. H. O. Voorma, ingevolge het besluit van het College voor Promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag 4 oktober 2000 des ochtends te 10:30 uur door Hendrik Willem Meijering elektrotechnisch ingenieur, geboren op 31 juli 1971 te Heemskerk. Promotor: Prof. Dr. Ir. M. A. Viergever University Medical Center Utrecht Co-promotor: Dr. W. J. Niessen University Medical Center Utrecht The research described in this thesis was carried out at the Image Sciences Institute, University Medical Center Utrecht (Utrecht, the Netherlands), under the auspices of ImagO, the Utrecht graduate school for Biomedical Image Sciences. The project was financially supported by the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs, within the framework of the Innovation Oriented Research Programme (IOP Beeldverwerking, project number IBV96004). Financial support for publication of this thesis was kindly provided by Vital Images Inc. (USA), Philips Medical Systems Nederland B.V., SGI Nederland, and Schering Nederland B.V. Financial support by the Netherlands Heart Foundation and the Rönt- gen Stichting Utrecht is also gratefully acknowledged. Additional financial support was provided by the Image Sciences Institute and Utrecht University. Preface This thesis describes the findings of the research I carried out as part of my Ph.D. study at Utrecht University, de facto the University Medical Center Utrecht. The framework within which this research was supported has certainly left its mark on large parts of this thesis, where the focus is on technological solutions to practical problems, and efficient implementation and thorough evaluation of both newly de- veloped and existing techniques. The first research efforts were directed towards the development of techniques for automatic reduction of patient motion artifacts in DSA images. The findings of this work are described in Chapters 2–4. It was while working on efficient image warping techniques when I became interested in the problem of image interpolation. Early results in this area were not included in this thesis because they were considered too far-off from the main theme. The results of a subsequently performed evaluation of interpolation techniques for the task of medical image transformation are presented in Chapter 6. Research in the final stages of the project, reported in Chapter 5, was focussed on image enhancement techniques for improved visualization and quantification of vascular anomalies in 3DRA images. It requires no explanation that this work could not have been completed without the help of others. First of all I’m indebted to my promotor, Prof. Max Viergever, for offering me a Ph.D. position, for the (scientific) freedom, for his constructive criticism in writing papers, and for allowing me to stay four more months to finish unfinished business. I thank my former supervisor, Karel Zuiderveld, for introducing me into the problem of image registration in DSA and for his invaluable help in developing the algorithm described in Chapter 3. I thank Wiro Niessen for his supervision in the latter stages of the project. Without his help and enthusiasm, Chapter 4 would not have been a part of this thesis. I also thank Richard Kemkers and Franklin Schuling (Philips Medical Systems, Best) for their input during discussions. Many thanks go to Jeannette Bakker, Gerard de Kort, Rob Lo, and Aart van der Molen, who sacrificed some of their free time in order to participate in the evaluation study presented in Chapter 4. Also thanks to Prof. Mali for his help in designing the study, to Tineke Kievit for providing me with the necessary patient data, and to Gerard van Hoorn, Koen Vincken, Theo van Walsum, Remko van der Weide, and Onno Wink for their technical support in the startup phase. Remko is furthermore acknowledged for his comments on the visualization routines which I wrote for the experiments described in Chapter 5, and together with Evert-Jan Vonken and Clemens Bos for his help during early attempts to fill the vascular phantoms used in those experiments. The edge-enhancing diffusion scheme evaluated in Chapter 5 was obtained by modifying a nonlinear diffusion algorithm which was kindly provided by Joachim Weickert (University of Mannheim, Germany). vi Preface In view of the medical datasets used in this thesis, several acknowledgments are in order. I thank Wilma Pauw for her contributions in obtaining the XRA runs and 3DRA datasets used in Chapters 1 and 3–6. The input of Rolf Suurmond and John op de Beek (Philips Medical Systems, Best) in acquiring the phantom 3DRA images used in Chapter 5 is also gratefully acknowledged. Rik Stokking and Prof. Buitelaar provided me with the SPECT datasets used in Chapter 6. Finally, the CT, MR, and PET datasets used in that same chapter were made available by Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN, USA; see Page 127 for further acknowledgments). Considering the amount of time we’ve managed to spend in a heavily undersized office, Josien Pluim and Bram van Ginneken should also not remain unnoticed. Josien is furthermore acknowledged for sharing her knowledge on medical image registration, and Bram for being the initiator of the programming environment which formed the basis for the software which I wrote for the experiments in Chapter 5. I thank Sandra Boeijink for having made my life easier in financial matters, and Margo Agterberg for the social updates and for helping me out in arranging my last-minute trip to Japan. Special thanks to my colleagues and friends Alejandro Frangi and Bert Haverkamp for agreeing to serve as “paranimf” during my defense. Although in the preceding I have restricted myself to mentioning those who have actually contributed to my research and have helped me in related matters, the contributions of all other colleagues to the pleasant working environment over the past four years are gratefully acknowledged. I also express here my gratitude to the review com- mittee: Prof. Eikelboom, Prof. Hillen, Prof. Mali (University Medical Center Utrecht), Prof. Unser (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne), and Prof. van Vliet (Delft University of Technology), for their positive judgment. I thank Michael Unser furthermore for his interest in my work and for supporting my visit(s) to Lausanne. I’m looking forward to a fruitful collaboration. Very special thanks go to my wife, Greetje: thank you for your unconditional love and unfailing patience and support, especially in the final stages of my project, when I must have been a lousy husband. I also thank our children, Marjolein and Daniël, for their love and for forcing me to let go of my work from time to time. I am much obliged to all of my family and friends for their support through the years. In particular my parents, Tiem and Jannie Meijering, who always encouraged me to exploit whatever talents I had and who paid for the preparatory eduction necessary to write this thesis. I conclude by saying that I feel quite fortunate to have entered thisworldinanenvironmentinwhichIcouldgrowupprosperouslyandwritethis thesis and, eventually, this preface. Therefore, above all, I thank God! Erik Meijering Utrecht, July 2000 Contents Colophon ii Preface v Abbreviations xi 1 Introduction and Summary 1 2 Retrospective Motion Correction in Digital Subtraction Angiography — A Review 7 2.1Introduction................................. 7 2.2MotionArtifactsandPossibleSolutions................. 8 2.2.1 ExamplesofMotionArtifacts................... 8 2.2.2 PatientRelatedSolutions..................... 9 2.2.3 AcquisitionRelatedSolutions................... 9 2.2.4 RetrospectiveImageProcessingSolutions............ 11 2.3RetrospectiveMotionCorrection—Preliminaries...........

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