Motion Compensation in Pulmonary Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging: An Image Processing Pipeline for Artefact Reduction and Clinical Precision
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Goal:This study introduces Temporal Reliability and Accuracy via Correlation Enhanced Registration (TRACER), a novel image processing pipeline that addresses motion artefacts in real-time Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging (FLIm) data forin-vivopulmonary Optical Endomicroscopy (OEM). Its primary objective is to improve the accuracy and reliability of FLIm image sequences.Methods: The proposed TRACER pipeline comprises a comprehensive sequence of pre-processing steps and a novel registration approach. This includes the removal of uninformative frames and motion characterisation through dense optical flow, followed by a tracking-based Normalised Cross Correlation image registration method leveraging Channel and Spatial Reliability Tracker for precise alignment.Results: The complete TRACER pipeline delivers significant performance improvements, with 20% to 30% enhancement across different metrics for all tested registration methods. In particular, the unique TRACER registration approach outperforms state-of-theart methods in image registration performance and achieves an order-of-magnitude faster runtime than the next best-performing approach.Conclusion: By addressing motion artefacts through its integrated pre-processing and novel registration strategy, TRACER offers a robust solution that ensures improved image quality and real-time feasibility for FLIm data processing inin-vivopulmonary OEM.
Language: English
Subfield: Biophysics
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,075
OpenAlex ID: W4409257490