Ultrasound to magnetic resonance volume registration for brain sinking measurement

This paper addresses the registration of ultrasound scans and magnetic resonance (MR) volume datasets of the same patient. During a neurosurgery intervention, pre-operative MR images are often employed as a guide despite the fact that they do not show the actual state of the brain, which sometimes has sunk up to 1 cm. By means of a standard ecographer and a tracker connected to a computer, it is feasible to build on-line an updated picture of the brain. We propose an algorithm which first composes the volume ecography of the brain and registers it to the MR volume. Next, it aligns individual B-scans into the MR volume, thus providing a measure of the suffered deformation. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.