Non-rigid Registration of the Liver in Consecutive CT Studies for Assessment of Tumor Response to Radiofrequency Ablation

This paper introduces a non-rigid registration approach for tracking tumor response to radiofrequency ablation (RFA) across consecutive imaging studies. The method described here exploits the combined power of global and local alignment of pre- and post-treatment CT liver images for a given patient. The distinguishing characteristics of the system is that it can infer volumetric deformation based upon surface displacements using a linearly elastic finite element model (FEM). This technique may provide valuable information that could be beneficial in a range of surgical interventions as well as for the purposes of monitoring tissue response and therapy planning.