  A common problem which is faced by the researchers when dealing with arterial
carotid imaging data is the registration of the geometrical structures between
different imaging modalities or different timesteps. The use of the "Patient
Position" DICOM field is not adequate to achieve accurate results due to the
fact that the carotid artery is a relatively small structure and even
imperceptible changes in patient position and/or direction make it difficult.
While there is a wide range of simple/advanced registration techniques in the
literature, there is a considerable number of studies which address the
geometrical structure of the carotid artery without using any registration
technique. On the other hand the existence of various registration techniques
prohibits an objective comparison of the results using different registration
techniques. In this paper we present a method for estimating the statistical
significance that the choice of the registration technique has on the carotid
geometry. One-Way Analysis of Variance(ANOVA) showed that the p-values were
<0.0001 for the distances of the lumen from the centerline for both right and
left carotids of the patient case that was studied.
