Three-dimensional B-spline-based intersubject nonrigid registration with geodesic closest points constraints

Abstract

Due to the variance between subjects, there is usually ambiguity in intensity-based intersubject registration. The topological constraint in the brain cortical surface might be violated because of the highly convolved nature of the human cortical cortex. We propose an intersubject brain registration method by combining the intensity and the geodesic closest point-based similarity measurements. Each of the brain hemispheres can be topologically equal to a sphere and a one-to-one mapping of the points on the spherical surfaces of the two subjects can be achieved. The correspondences in the cortical surface are obtained by searching the geodesic closest points in the spherical surface. The corresponding features on the cortical surfaces between subjects are then used as anatomical landmarks for intersubject registration. By adding these anatomical constraints of the cortical surfaces, the intersubject registration results are more anatomically plausible and accurate. We validate our method by using real human datasets. Experimental results in visual inspection and alignment error show that the proposed method performs better than the typical joint intensity- and landmark-distance-based methods.