Medical image elastic registration based on discontinuity adaptive Markov random field model

We present a novel elastic registration algorithm using discontinuity adaptive Markov random field (DA-MRF) model. We use B-spline to model the deformation field, and then the coefficients of B-spline are the parameters to be evaluated. We model the coefficients fields as MRFs. The optimal deformation is sought as maximum a posteriori (MAP) configurations through a minimisation problem that includes two terms: the pixel-wise mean-square distance measure between the reference and the warped test image (data term), and continuity constraints imposed on pairs of neighbouring coefficients that promotes a smooth deformation (regularisation term). We use two-and three-dimensional medical images to test the proposed algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed method is robust and accurate, suitable for clinical application.