A methodology for registration of a histological slide and in vivo MRI volume based on optimizing mutual information

Abstract

We present a method for registering histology and in vivo imaging that requires minimal microtoming and is automatic following the user's initialization. In this demonstration, we register a single hematoxylin-and- eosin-stained histological slide of a coronal section of a rat brain harboring a 9L gliosarcoma with an in vivo 7T MR image volume of the same brain. Because the spatial resolution of the in vivo MRI is limited, we add the step of obtaining a high spatial resolution, ex vivo MRI in situ for intermediate registration. The approach taken was to maximize mutual information in order to optimize the registration between all pairings of image data whether the sources are MRI, tissue blo..