Fast Tensor Image Morphing for Elastic Registration

We propose a novel algorithm, called Fast Tensor Image Morphing for Elastic Registration or F-TIMER. F-TIMER leverages multiscale tensor regional distributions and local boundaries for hierarchically driving deformable matching of tensor image volumes. Registration is achieved by aligning a set of automatically determined structural landmarks, via, solving a soft, correspondence problem. Based on the estimated correspondences thin-plate splines are employed to generate a smooth, topology preserving, and dense transformation, and to avoid arbitrary mapping of non-landmark voxels. To mitigate the problem of local minima; Which is common in the estimation of high dimensional transformations, We employ a hierarchical strategy Where a small subset of voxels with more distinctive attribute vectors are first. deployed as landmarks to estimate a relatively robust low-degrees-of-freedom transformation. As the registration progresses, an increasing number of voxels are permitted to participate in refining the correspondence marching. A scheme as such allows less conservative progression of the correspondence, matching towards the Optimal Solution: and heme results in a, faster matching speed. Result's indicate that better accuracy can be achieved by F-TIMER, compared with other deformable, registration algorithms [1,2], with significantly reduced computation time cost; of 4-14 folds.