A Full Curvature Based Algorithm for Image Registration

Abstract

Image registration, i.e., finding an optimal displacement field u which minimizes a distance functional D(u) is known to be an ill-posed problem. In this paper a novel variational image registration method is presented, which matches two images acquired from the same or from different medical imaging modalities. The approach proposed here is also independent of the image dimension. The proposed variational penalty against oscillations in the solutions is the standard H2(?) Sobolev semi-inner product for each component of the displacement. We investigate the associated Euler-Lagrange equation of the energy functional. Furthermore, we approach the solution of the underlying system of biharmonic differential equations with higher order boundary conditions as the steady-state solution of a parabolic partial differential equation (PDE). One of the important aspects of this approach is that the kernel of the Euler-Lagrange equation is spanned by all rigid motions. Hence, the presented approach includes a rigid alignment. Experimental results on both synthetic and real images are presented to illustrate the capabilities of the proposed approach.