Gregor Thrmer1, Nikita Garnov1,
Jrgen Haase2, Thomas Kahn1, Michael Moche1,
Harald Busse1
1Diagnostic and Interventional
Radiology, Leipzig University Hospital, Leipzig, Germany; 2Physics
and Geosciences Department, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
MR-visible
markers have many potential applications such as an automated mapping of
coordinate systems (image/patient registration), stereotactic
planning/monitoring of procedures, and the localization/tracking of devices
inside the magnet. In this work, precision, accuracy and update rates of a
fully automatic marker localization based on morphologic image processing
have been studied experimentally as well as theoretically (simulation) as a
function of the underlying pixel size. The moderate 3D errors (1 mm)
observed for the fastest sequence (pixel dimension 4.7 mm) clearly
demonstrate that the presented technique does not necessarily require highly
resolved images of the markers (physical dimension 4 mm).