Memory efficient LDDMM for lung CT

Abstract

In this paper a novel Large Deformation Diffeomorphic Metric Mapping (LDDMM) scheme is presented which has significantly lower computational and memory demands than standard LDDMM but achieves the same accuracy. We exploit the smoothness of velocities and transformations by using a coarser discretization compared to the image resolution. This reduces required memory and accelerates numerical optimization as well as solution of transport equations. Accuracy is essentially unchanged as the mismatch of transformed moving and fixed image is incorporated into the model at high resolution. Reductions in memory consumption and runtime are demonstrated for registration of lung CT images. State-of-the-art accuracy is shown for the challenging DIRLab chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) lung CT data sets obtaining a mean landmark distance after registration of 1.03mm and the best average results so far.