Three-dimensional breast dynamic
contrast-enhanced imaging is susceptible to deformable motion and affects both
semi-quantitative and pharmacokinetic parameters. B-Spline motion registration
with a mutual information metric is often used to register DCE images but is
sometimes susceptible to introduction of new motion. Here we have introduced a
fat-based motion registration, using a mean-squared-difference signal metric,
to register the water images without introducing new motion. The acquired
images and both registration methods were qualitatively assessed in 16 breasts.
Voxel-by-voxel pharmacokinetic mapping was also performed in 21 tumors. Our
results show that fat-based registration can be used to register the water
images with improved image quality and reduced errors in quantification.
