Anatomically Embedded Representations for Medical Image Registration in Clinical Applications

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Medical image registration is an essential task in a variety of clinical applications such as diagnosis, follow-up of pathologies, treatment planning and simulation, intra-operative surgery assistance and treatment outcome assessment. Despite the tremendous progress already made by the research community and the huge number of sophisticated methods proposed for intra-modal and multimodal image registration, their applicability in clinical environments is still limited. The most important bottlenecks preventing a wide use of these methods in clinical applications are not only their precision and robustness but also their associated computational cost. The overall objective of our research program is to pursue fundamental and applied research for the development of novel representations of anatomical structures of the trunk and registration algorithms with high potential impact in non invasive diagnosis, clinical follow-up, surgical planning and assistance in the treatment of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis deformities. More specifically, we will instigate a new representation of the triangulated mesh surface of the trunk, obtained from non invasive 3D cameras, using spectral graph theory. The novelty of our approach will lie in using anatomical features of the trunk as weights in graph nodes and as extra embedded coordinates with no additional computational expense. In addition, the efficiency of multimodal image registration of the trunk will be enhanced by using a closed form solution based on an articulated model of the spine. This research program will first significantly contribute to the advancement of scientific research in the field of medical image registration by combining anatomically relevant representations with an original spectral embedding approach. Second, the proposed approach will ensure the reproducibility and the efficiency of multimodal image registration required in clinical applications, which will contribute toward technology transfer for healthcare. Third, this research program promotes the use of non invasive modalities in the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment outcome assessment of scoliosis, which will lead to enhanced quality of life for patients and reduced costs for the healthcare system.