Nonrigid Registration of Brain Tumor Resection MR Images Based on Joint Saliency Map and Keypoint Clustering

Intraoperative Imaging Modalities and Compensation for Brain Shift in Tumor Resection Surgery

Intraoperative brain shift during neurosurgical procedures is a well-known phenomenon caused by gravity, tissue manipulation, tumor size, loss of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and use of medication. For the use of image-guided systems, this phenomenon greatly affects the accuracy of the guidance. During the last several decades, researchers have investigated how to overcome this problem. The purpose of this paper is to present a review of publications concerning different aspects of intraoperative brain shift especially in a tumor resection surgery such as intraoperative imaging systems, quantification, measurement, modeling, and registration techniques. Clinical experience of using intraoperative imaging modalities, details about registration, and modeling methods in connection with brain shift in tumor resection surgery are the focuses of this review. In total, 126 papers regarding this topic are analyzed in a comprehensive summary and are categorized according to fourteen criteria. The result of the categorization is presented in an interactive web tool. The consequences from the categorization and trends in the future are discussed at the end of this work.

A Learning Based Fiducial-driven Registration Scheme for Evaluating Laser Ablation Changes in Neurological Disorders

In this work, we present a novel learning based fiducial driven registration (LeFiR) scheme which utilizes a point matching technique to identify the optimal configuration of landmarks to better recover deformation between a target and a moving image. Moreover, we employ the LeFiR scheme to model the localized nature of deformation introduced by a new treatment modality - laser induced interstitial thermal therapy (LITT) for treating neurological disorders. Magnetic resonance (MR) guided LITT has recently emerged as a minimally invasive alternative to craniotomy for local treatment of brain diseases (such as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), epilepsy). However, LITT is currently only practised as an investigational procedure world-wide due to lack of data on longer term patient outcome following LITT. There is thus a need to quantitatively evaluate treatment related changes between post- and pre-LITT in terms of MR imaging markers. In order to validate LeFiR, we tested the scheme on a synthetic brain dataset (SBD) and in two real clinical scenarios for treating GBM and epilepsy with LITT. Four experiments under different deformation profiles simulating localized ablation effects of LITT on MRI were conducted on 286 pairs of SBD images. The training landmark configurations were obtained through 2000 iterations of registration where the points with consistently best registration performance were selected. The estimated landmarks greatly improved the quality metrics compared to a uniform grid (UniG) placement scheme, a speeded-up robust features (SURF) based method, and a scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) based method as well as a generic free-form deformation (FFD) approach. The LeFiR method achieved average 90% improvement in recovering the local deformation compared to 82% for the uniform grid placement, 62% for the SURF based approach, and 16% for the generic FFD approach. On the real GBM and epilepsy data, the quantitative results showed that LeFiR outperformed UniG by 28% improvement in average.

Precision radiotherapy for brain tumors: A 10-year bibliometric analysis

OBJECTIVE:

Precision radiotherapy plays an important role in the management of brain tumors. This study aimed to identify global research trends in precision radiotherapy for brain tumors using a bibliometric analysis of the Web of Science.

DATA RETRIEVAL:

We performed a bibliometric analysis of data retrievals for precision radiotherapy for brain tumors containing the key words cerebral tumor, brain tumor, intensity-modulated radiotherapy, stereotactic body radiation therapy, stereotactic ablative radiotherapy, imaging-guided radiotherapy, dose-guided radiotherapy, stereotactic brachytherapy, and stereotactic radiotherapy using the Web of Science.

SELECTION CRITERIA:

Inclusion criteria: (a) peer-reviewed articles on precision radiotherapy for brain tumors which were published and indexed in the Web of Science; (b) type of articles: original research articles and reviews; (c) year of publication: 2002-2011. Exclusion criteria: (a) articles that required manual searching or telephone access; (b) Corrected papers or book chapters.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:

(1) Annual publication output; (2) distribution according to country; (3) distribution according to institution; (4) top cited publications; (5) distribution according to journals; and (6) comparison of study results on precision radiotherapy for brain tumors.

RESULTS:

The stereotactic radiotherapy, intensity-modulated radiotherapy, and imaging-guided radiotherapy are three major methods of precision radiotherapy for brain tumors. There were 260 research articles addressing precision radiotherapy for brain tumors found within the Web of Science. The USA published the most papers on precision radiotherapy for brain tumors, followed by Germany and France. European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, German Cancer Research Center and Heidelberg University were the most prolific research institutes for publications on precision radiotherapy for brain tumors. Among the top 13 research institutes publishing in this field, seven are in the USA, three are in Germany, two are in France, and there is one institute in India. Research interests including urology and nephrology, clinical neurology, as well as rehabilitation are involved in precision radiotherapy for brain tumors studies.

CONCLUSION:

Precision radiotherapy for brain tumors remains a highly active area of research and development.