The adaptive bases algorithm for nonrigid image registration

Nonrigid registration of medical images is an important procedure in many aspects of current biomedical and bioengineering research. For example, it is a necessary step for studying the variation of biological tissue properties, such as shape or diffusion properties across population, compute population averages, or atlas-based segmentation. Recently we have introduced the Adaptive Bases registration algorithm as a general method for performing nonrigid registration of medical images and we have shown it to be faster and more accurate than existing algorithms of the same class [1-3]. The overall properties of the Adaptive Bases algorithm are reviewed here and the method is validated on applications that include the computation of average images, atlas based segmentation, and motion correction of video images. Results show the Adaptive Bases algorithm to be capable of producing high quality nonrigid matches for the applications above mentioned.