Fast Techniques for Automatic Local Pixel Shift and Rubber Sheet Masking in Digital Subtraction Angiography

A fast and completely automated method for reduction of movement artifacts in Digital Subtraction Angiography is presented. In the first part of the article the properties of the used matching algorithm with regard to image statistics are discussed; attention is also paid to fast implementations of the algorithm. In the second part of the article the characteristics of a practical implementation of the method are described, while the feasibility of the method is illustrated with some clinical results. We conclude that the proposed method, called Rubber Sheet Masking, compares favorably with convential interactive pixel shift methods.