Registration of mammograms and breast tomosynthesis images

Abstract

Digital breast tomosynthesis is becoming a clinically attractive modality based on its potential to combine the high resolution and high contrast images, and affordability of digital mammography, with the advantages of 3D image acquisition. In order to facilitate comparison of tomosynthesis images with previous mammographic exams of the same women, there is a need for a method of registering a mammogram with a tomosynthetic image of the same breast; this is the focus of this paper. We have chosen to approach this multimodality registration problem, starting from the simpler problem of registering a mammogram and the central tomosynthesis source image. Such a registration pair represents the most similar breast images obtained from different clinical modalities. In this study of IS pairs of mammograms and central tomosynthesis projections of the same breast, on average we were able to compensate 94 percent of the per-pixel intensity differences that existed between the two images before the registration. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.