The potential benefit of hybrid X-ray and MR imaging in the interventional environment is large due to the combination of fast imaging with high contrast variety. However, a vast amount of existing image enhancement methods requires the image information of both modalities to be present in the same domain. To unlock this potential, we present a solution to image-to-image translation from MR projections to corresponding x-ray projection images. The approach is based on a state-of-the-art image generator network that is modified to fit the specific application. Furthermore, we propose the inclusion of a gradient map in the loss function to allow the network to emphasize high-frequency details in image generation. Our approach is capable of creating x-ray projection images with natural appearance. Additionally, our extensions show clear improvement compared to the baseline method.

Date Published: 15 March 2019
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 10949, Medical Imaging 2019: Image Processing, 109492K (15 March 2019); doi: 10.1117/12.2512195

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10949:
Medical Imaging 2019: Image Processing
Elsa D. Angelini; Bennett A. Landman, Editor(s)