Automated clinical decision support systems rely on accurate analysis of three-dimensional (3D) medical and dental images to assist clinicians in diagnosis, treatment planning, intervention, and assessment of growth and treatment effects. However, analyzing 3D images requires orientation and registration, which are tedious and error-prone tasks.
This project proposes two novel tools that can automatically perform the orientation and registration of 3D Cone-Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) scans with high accuracy. Our work aims to reduce the sources of error in the 3D image processing workflow by automating these operations. These methods combine classical algorithmic approaches and AI-based models trained and tested on de-identified CBCT volumetric images.
The registration method is based on an automatic tool AMASSS to perform a segmentation of the different regions of reference (described here) used for the regional voxel-based registration
Our code is available here
The different methods for automatic orientation and registration of 3D CBCT scans rely on a combination of algorithmic and deep-learning techniques to perform both the orientation and the registration automatically. It also uses work that our group of researchers has already developed. Our Python-based algorithm and requires multiple libraries for the different image-processing tasks accomplished throughout the proposed method: SimpleITK \cite{Lowekamp2013-jt}, VTK \cite{Schroeder2006-ab}, SimpleElastix \cite{SimpleElastix}. To implement these tools, we also used the Medical Open Network for Artificial Intelligence (MONAI) library, which is a PyTorch-based framework for medical image analysis. MONAI offers several advantages for our work, such as high performance, modularity, and interoperability with other libraries.