Towards registration of temporal mammograms by finite element simulation of MR breast volumes

Performing regular mammographic screening and comparing corresponding mammograms taken from multiple views or at different times are necessary for early detection and treatment evaluation of breast cancer, which is key to successful treatment. However, mammograms taken at different times are often obtained under different compression, orientation, or body position. A temporal pair of mammograms may vary significantly due to the spatial disparities caused by the variety in acquisition environments, including 3D position of the breast, the amount of pressure applied, etc. Such disparities can be corrected through the process of temporal registration. We propose to use a 3D finite element model for temporal registration of digital mammography. In this paper, we apply patient specific 3D breast model constructed from MRI data of the patient, for cases where lesions are detectable in multiple mammographic views across time. The 3D location of the lesion in the breast model is computed through a breast deformation simulation step presented in our earlier work. Lesion correspondence is established by using a nearest neighbor approach in the uncompressed breast volume. Our experiments show that the use of a 3D finite element model for simulating and analyzing breast deformation contributes to good accuracy when matching suspicious regions in temporal mammograms.