Nonrigid Point Registration for 2D Curves and 3D Surfaces and its Applications in Small Animal Imaging

• Authors: Hesheng Wang, Emory University; Baowei Fei, Emory University
• Journal Title: Physics in Medicine and Biology
• Volume: Volume 58, Number 12
• Publisher: IOP Publishing: Hybrid Open Access | 2013-06-21
• Type of Work: Article | Post-print: After Peer Review
• Publisher DOI: http://doi.org/10.1088/0031-9155/58/12/4315
• Subjects: Health Sciences, Radiology
• Keywords: nonrigid registration; B-spline; deterministic annealing; small animal imaging

Abstract

A nonrigid B-spline based point-matching method (BPM) is proposed to match dense surface points. The method solves both the point correspondence and nonrigid transformation without features extraction. The registration method integrates a motion model, which combines a global transformation and a B-spline based local deformation, into a robust point-matching framework. The point correspondence and deformable transformation are estimated simultaneously by fuzzy correspondence and by a deterministic annealing technique. Prior information about global translation, rotation and scaling is incorporated into the optimization. A local B-spline motion model decreases the degrees of freedom for optimization and thus enables the registration of a larger number of feature points. The performance of the BPM method has been demonstrated and validated using synthesized 2D and 3D data, mouse MRI, and micro-CT images. The proposed B-spline point-matching method can be used to register feature point sets, 2D curves, 3D surfaces, and various image data.