Non-rigid 2D/3D registration of coronary artery models with live fluoroscopy images

A method for non-rigid registration of digital 3D coronary artery models with 2D fluoroscopic images during a cardiac intervention comprising the steps of:

• providing a digitized 3D centerline representation of a coronary artery tree, wherein the 3D centerline comprises a set of S segments composed of Qs 3D control points;
• globally aligning the 3D centerlines to at least two 2D fluoroscopic images by performing a translation-only registration of the 3D centerline to the at least two 2D fluoroscopic images, performing a rigid registration of the 3D centerline to the at least two 2D fluoroscopic images, and performing an affine registration of the 3D centerline to the at least two 2D fluoroscopic images, wherein at each step, an energy functional of the form
• E
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• is minimized, wherein j labels the translation-only registration, the rigid registration, and the affine registration, C is a coordinate transformation between a coordinate system of the 3D centerline and a coordinate system of a 3D imaging device, Tj is a coordinate transformation between a coordinate system of the 3D imaging device and a coordinate system of a biplane C-arm that acquires the fluoroscopic images, for the translation-only, rigid, and affine registrations, x is a 3D point in homogeneous coordinates, n represents a sum over the fluoroscopic images, s and q label control points on the segments of the 3D centerline, Pn is a coordinate transformation between the coordinate system of the biplane C-arm and the coordinate system of the nth fluoroscopic image, Ψn is a projection operator that projects the 3D point x to the nth fluoroscopic image, and DBn(x) is a distance between a 2D point on the nth fluoroscopic image and a closest point in the segmented coronary artery tree in the nth binarized image Bn;
• and
• non-rigidly registering the 3D centerline to the at least two 2D fluoroscopic images.

A non-transitory program storage device readable by a computer, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executed by the computer to perform the method steps for non-rigid registration of digital 3D coronary artery models with 2D fluoroscopic images during a cardiac intervention, the method comprising the steps of:

• providing a digitized 3D centerline representation of a coronary artery tree, wherein the 3D centerline comprises a set of S segments composed of QS 3D control points;
• globally aligning the 3D centerline to at east two 2D fluoroscopic images;
• and
• non-rigidly registering the 3D centerline to the at least two 2D fluoroscopic images by minimizing an energy functional that includes a summation of square differences between reconstructed centerline points and registered centerline points, a summation of squared 3D registration vectors, a summation of squared derivative 3D registration vectors, and a myocardial branch energy,
• wherein the non-rigid registration of the 3D centerline is represented as a set of 3D translation vectors rs,q that are applied to corresponding centerline points xs,q in a coordinate system of the 3D centerline.