Tracking motion of deformable organ in DCE framework

A technique of growing importance to perform non invasive analysis is the Dynamic Contrast Enhancement (DCE). It is based on the dynamic analysis of the perfusion of a contrast agent in tissues and exploits the fact that for several diseases, such as cancer, the vascular substrate is developed differently (hypervascular) if compared to the healthy parenchyma. A challenge for a correct analysis of the DCE is to compensate deformations and displacements of organs/lesions due to patient breathing, interior peristalsis, etc. The compensation for such artifacts is complex because signal intensity varies over time due to the diffusion of the contrast agent and organs suffer of deformation in order of their nature of soft tissues. In this paper we describe a technique based on the use of active contours to compensate such artifacts. The method has been successfully tested on different types of real organs of several patients.