Nonrigid registration of multiple sclerosis brain images using lesion inpainting for morphometry or lesion mapping

TLDR

Morphometric studies of medical images often include a nonrigid registration step from a subject to a common reference, but white matter multiple sclerosis lesions distort and bias the registration output. We present a method to remove this bias by filling such lesions to make the brain look like a healthy brain before registration. We propose a dedicated lesion‑inpainting method that fills lesions before registration. Numerical results show that our method outperforms current state‑of‑the‑art methods. Published in Hum Brain Mapp 2009; © 2008 Wiley‑Liss, Inc.

Abstract

Abstract Morphometric studies of medical images often include a nonrigid registration step from a subject to a common reference. The presence of white matter multiple sclerosis lesions will distort and bias the output of the registration. In this article, we present a method to remove this bias by filling such lesions to make the brain look like a healthy brain before the registration. We finally propose a dedicated method to fill the lesions and present numerical results showing that our method outperforms current state of the art method. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.