Structural rectal atlas deformation features for characterizing intra-wall and peri-wall chemoradiation response on magnetic resonance imaging (mri)

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed, cause a processor to perform operations, comprising:

• accessing an image volume of a rectum having a rectal wall, wherein the rectal wall comprises a plurality of deformations;
• generating a forward mapping based on non-rigidly registering a healthy rectal atlas to the image volume;
• inverting the forward mapping to generate an inverse mapping from the image volume to the healthy rectal atlas;
• determining a plurality of deformation vectors for a plurality of voxels within the inverse mapping, the plurality of deformation vectors describing a deformation within the rectal wall that is a largest deformation of the plurality of deformations;
• computing magnitude based deformation features and orientation based deformation features from the plurality of deformation vectors;
• and
• utilizing one or more of the magnitude based deformation features and one or more of the orientation based deformation features to determine a magnitude and a direction of a change in the deformation.

A method of performing a prognosis of medical treatment, comprising:

• accessing an image volume of a rectum having a rectal wall, wherein the rectal wall comprises a plurality of deformations;
• generating a forward mapping based on non-rigidly registering a healthy rectal atlas to the image volume;
• inverting the forward mapping to generate an inverse mapping from the image volume to the healthy rectal atlas;
• determining, based on the inverse mapping, a plurality of deformation vectors describing a deformation within the rectal wall, wherein the deformation is a largest deformation of the plurality of deformations;
• computing magnitude based deformation features and orientation based deformation features from the plurality of deformation vectors;
• and
• utilizing one or more of the magnitude based deformation features and one or more of the orientation based deformation features to determine a magnitude and direction of a change in the deformation due to a chemotherapy treatment.