Measuring the reliability of geometries in magnet resonance angiography: A reference for multimodal image registration?

Abstract

Magnet Resonance Angiography (MRA) can be used to register MR images of other types (e.g. functional MRI) acquired in the same imaging session as the angiogram since blood vessels are spatially closely confined features. This is only possible if MRA delivers reliable, reproducible images and does not show major random distortions. Therefore, we examine the reliability of MRA over subsequent scanning sessions using an appropriate distance measure on geometric vasculature models obtained from MR angiograms. Additionally we examine the variance between different specimens in order to value the possibility of inter-specimen registration.