Deformable registration of digital images
Deformable Registration of Digital Images

This paper proposes a novel elastic model and presents a deformable registration method based on the model. The method registers images without the need to extract features from the images, and therefore works directly on grey-level images. A new similarity metric is given on which the formation of external forces is based. The registration method, taking the coarse-to-fine strategy constructs external forces in larger scales for the first few iterations to rely more on global evidence, and then in smaller scales for later iterations to allow local relinements. The stiffness of the elastic body decreases as the process proceeds.To make it widely applicable, the method is not restricted to any trpe of transformation. The variations between images are thought as general free-form deformations.Because the elastic model designed is linearized, it can be solved very efficiently with high accuracy.The method has been successfully tested on MRI images. It will certainly find other uses such as matching time-varying sequences of pictures for moion analysis,fitting templates into images for non-rigid object recognition, maching stereo images for shape recovery etc.