Quasi-conformal hybrid multi-modality image registration and its application to medical image fusion

Abstract

Fusion of images with same or different modalities has been conquering medical imaging field more rapidly due to the presence of highly accessible patients’ information in recent years. For example, cross platform non-rigid registration of CT with MRI images has found a significant role in different clinical application. In some instances labelling of anatomical features by medical experts are also involved to further improve the accuracy and authenticity of the registration. Being motivated by these, we propose a new algorithm to compute diffeomorphic hybrid multi-modality registration with large deformations. Our iterative scheme consists of mainly two steps. First, we obtain the optimal Beltrami coefficient corresponding to the diffeomorphic mapping that exactly superimposes the feature points. The second step detects the intensity difference in the framework of mutual information. A non-rigid deformation which minimizes the intensity difference is then obtained. Experiments have been carried out on both synthetic and real data. Results demonstrate the stability and efficacy of the proposed algorithm to obtain diffeomorphic image registration.