Radial subsampling for fast cost function computation in intensity-based 3D image registration

Abstract

Image registration is always a trade-off between accuracy and speed. Looking towards clinical scenarios the time for bringing two or more images into registration should be around a few seconds only. We present a new scheme for subsampling 3D-image data to allow for efficient computation of cost functions in intensity-based image registration. Starting from an arbitrary center point voxels are sampled along scan lines which do radially extend from the center point. We analyzed the characteristics of different cost functions computed on the sub-sampled data and compared them to known cost functions with respect to local optima. Results show the cost functions are smooth and give high peaks at the expected optima. Furthermore we investigated capture range of cost functions computed under the new subsampling scheme. Capture range was remarkably better for the new scheme compared to metrics using all voxels or different subsampling schemes and high registration accuracy was achieved as well. The most important result is the improvement in terms of speed making this scheme very interesting for clinical scenarios. We conclude using the new subsampling scheme intensity-based 3D image registration can be performed much faster than using other approaches while maintaining high accuracy. A variety of different extensions of the new approach is conceivable, e.g. non-regular distribution of the scan lines or not to let the scan lines start from a center point only, but from the surface of an organ model for example.