Image guidance of endovascular interventions on a clinical MR scanner

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) offers potential advantages over conventio nal X-ray techniques for guiding and evaluating vascular interventions. Ima ge guidance of such interventions via passive catheter tracking requires re al-time image processing. Commercially available MR scanners currently do n ot provide this functionality. This paper describes an image processing environment that allows near-real- time MR-guided vascular interventions. It demonstrates 1) that flexibility can be achieved by separating the scanner and the image processing/display system, thereby preserving the stability of the scanner and 2) that suffici ently rapid visualization can be achieved by low-cost workstations equipped with graphics hardware. The setup of the hardware and the software is desc ribed in detail. Furthermore, image processing techniques are presented for guiding the interventionalist through simple vascular anatomy. Finally, re sults of a phantom balloon angioplasty experiment are presented.