Abstract:
There is increasing interest in being able to
automatically register medical images from either the
same or different modalities. Registered images are
proving useful in a range of applications, not only providing
more correlative information to aid in diagnosis,
but also assisting with the planning and monitoring of
therapy, both surgery and radiotherapy. The practising
nuclear medicine specialist is faced with a dilemma in
choosing an appropriate method since the literature in
the field is extensive, with conflicting evidence as to
what methods are optimal. Although most barriers to implementing
registration in routine practice have been removed,
there remains a lack of commercial validated
software. The alternative is to install a dual-modality instrument.
The objective of this review is to present a
general overview of medical image registration with emphasis
on the application and issues relevant to nuclear
medicine.
