MRI-PET Registration with Automated Algorithm in Pre-clinical Studies

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) automatic 3-D registration is implemented and validated for small animal image volumes so that the high-resolution anatomical MRI information can be fused with the low spatial resolution of functional PET information for the localization of lesion that is currently in high demand in the study of tumor of cancer (oncology) and its corresponding preparation of pharmaceutical drugs. Though many registration algorithms are developed and applied on human brain volumes, these methods may not be as efficient on small animal datasets due to lack of intensity information and often the high anisotropy in voxel dimensions. Therefo…