Elastic Registration of Abdominal MRI Scans and RGB-D Images to Improve Surgical Planning of Breast Reconstruction

MRI and associated contrast agent administration to visualize the vasculature prove valuable for planning surgical interventions and can reduce the operative time by helping to locate internal structures of interest for the operation. However, the visual representation of soft tissues deviates due to differences in body posture, in water and fat content, and in their gravitational displacement. In this paper, we present a novel approach for calculating deformations of abdominal fat tissue and vascular structures in MRI scans. The underlying elastic registration model is based on a current abdominal RGB-D scan as a surface-matching target. We demonstrate the pipeline on Dixon MRI and RGB-D scans acquired from ten patients with a diagnosis of breast cancer and a treatment plan including mastectomy. Results indicate that the proposed system enhances the surgeon's spatial perception of the abdominal vasculature and improves the accuracy of blood vessel locations shown in MRI scans.