ABSTRACT The present paper shows a sytematic way to derive fluid-like registration equations. The novel technique is demonstrated for the case of optical flow-based and diffusion-based registration

Jens-Peer Kuska

Patrick Scheibe

Ulf-Dietrich Braumann

CiteSeerX

FAST FLUID EXTENSIONS FOR IMAGE REGISTRATION ALGORITHMS
Jens-Peer Kuska
Interdisciplinary Centre for Bioinformatics
University Leipzig
Härtelstraße 16-18
D-04107 Leipzig, Fed. Rep. of Germany
Patrick Scheibe, Ulf-Dietrich Braumann
Translational Centre for Regenerative Medicine
University Leipzig
Philipp-Rosenthal-Straße 55
D-04103 Leipzig, Fed. Rep. of Germany
ABSTRACT
The present paper shows a sytematic way to derive fluid-like
registration equations. The novel technique is demonstrated
for the case of optical flow-based and diffusion-based regis-
tration.
Index Terms—Biomedical image processing, Image reg-
istration, Fluid registration, Diffusion registration, Optical
flow registration, Nonlinear differential equations, Partial dif-
ferential equations
1. INTRODUCTION
Nonlinear image registration has various applications in im-
age processing, ranging from three-dimensional reconstruc-
tion of serial sections over segmentation with help of image
atlases to the measurement of changes during the develop-
ment of a disease.
The goal of image registration is to find a vector transfor-
mation
ux so that the sample image Sx under the transfor-
mation Sx  ux~~ matches the template image T x. Addi-
tionally, such transformation
ux is required to satisfy some
smoothness condition. One way to obtain such a trans-
formation is to use physically motivated equations like the
Navier-Lamé equation for the deformation
u [1] or solving
the Navier-Lamé equation for the velocity field
̇u and to use
the time integral of the velocity as the displacement field [2].
The variant that uses the two fields
̇ux and ux is called fluid
registration and uses the equation
Μ̇ux  Μ  Λ
 
  ̇ux~~  Fx, u. (1)
This is formally the same equation as for the elastic registra-
tion, but using the velocity field
̇u instead of the displacement
field
u. Since the Navier-Lamé equation is physically moti-
vated by the elasticy theory it is not easy to extend the equa-
tion to include additional constraints, like the supression of
Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), grant PTJ-BIO/
31P4282 (MS CartPro)
Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), grant PTJ-BIO/
031390 (TRM Leipzig)
vortices [3] or other properties of the displacement field or to
other differential operators for the smoothing of the displace-
ment field.
Another possibility to derive a differential equation for the
displacement field is to apply a variational approach [4, 5, 3]
that combines various conditions for the displacement field to
a functional that is mimimized by the solution. This approach
typically yields a static, time and velocity independent equa-
tion for the displacement field
ux. To obtain a smooth con-
vergence of the nonlinear equation one introduces an artificial
time and solves a diffusion-like equation [6, 7]. Since the dis-
placement field is modified by a diffusion like process, the
convergence of the variational equations is rather slow com-
paring to the fluid registration. Due to the nonlinearity of
this static equations it is typically hard to avoid local min-
ima and sophisticated multi-resolution techniques have been
developed [3].
The present paper offers a way to construct dynamic equa-
tions for the velocity field on the basis of variational equations
without the help of fluid dynamics.
2. EQUATION OF MOTION
2.1. Undamped Equation of Motion
For the registration of the sample image Sx onto the tem-
plate image T x with x  2, a displacement field ux, t 
u1
x, t, u2x, t~~T with u  2  2 must be found so that
u  1
2


T x  Sx  ux, t~~2 2x (2)
should be minimal. The dispacement field should obey
some smoothness condition. The fluid extension applies this
smoothness constraint not to the time derivative of the dis-
placement field
u
t
x, t  ̇ux, t,
and we will use the function ̇u for the smoothness of the
Lagrangian. For the case of optical flow-based image regis-
2408978-1-4244-1764-3/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE ICIP 2008
Fig. 1. The mapping of a circle (top left) onto the letter “C” (bottom left) with classical fluid fluid registration equation (1)
(second column, Μ, Λ  5/2, 0), the fluid diffusion equation (17) (third column, Α  1024) and fluid optical flow equation
(17) (last column Α  1024)
tration, the smoothness constraint is defined as
F
̇u  Ρ
2


2

i1
u̇ix, t2 2x , (3)
and for the diffusion registration
D
̇u  Ρ
2


2

i1

u̇ix, t~~2 2x . (4)
The negative sign in front of D is chosen, because we wish
a positive operator in the equations of motion applied to the
acceleration field. The Euler-Lagrange equation for
̇u, u  ̇u u (5)
yields
Ρ
2
t2
2u  F  0 (6)
for the optical flow-based image registration and
Ρ
2
t2
u  F  0 (7)
for the diffusion registration, with

F   	T x  Sx  ux, t~~
 
Sx  ux, t. (8)
Both equations are free from dissipation of the energy  
   and the solution will start to oscillate and develop
waves. Since we are interested in the minimum of  one
has to add friction forces.
2.2. Dissipative Forces
Friction forces are not an integral part of the Euler-Lagrange
equations but they can be included as additional summand in
the force Eqns. (6) and (7). We will add two kinds of friction
forces, one that acts independently of the position in space,
and a second force that includes the spatial dependence by
space derivatives of the velocity field. As position-indepen-
dent friction force the function

fl  Γ
̇u will be used. The
second dissipative force will depend on the partial derivatives
of the velocity field. The Navier-Stokes equation would sug-
gest a term proportional to

fv  Ν
̇u (the viscosity term),
and for the optical flow-based case a term

fv  Ν
2 ̇u will be
used.
Adding the two friction forces to the left hand side of the
Eqns. (6) and (7), the fluid extension for the optical flow-
based registration is given by the solution of the equation
Ρ
2
t2
2u  F  Γ ̇ux, t  Ν2 ̇ux, t (9)
and for the diffusion-based version one gets
Ρ
2
t2
u  F  ΜΓ ̇ux, t  ΜΝ̇ux, t. (10)
The only force free solution of the equations is obtained for
the case that the displacement field limt
ux, t transforms
the sample image onto the template image. In this case, the
force

F is zero and the friction will cause that the velocity
2409
Fig. 2. The mapping of a x-ray image of a hand (top left) onto another hand (bottom left) with classical fluid registration
equation (1) (second column, Μ, Λ  3/2, 1/2), the fluid diffusion equation (17) (third column, Α  24576) and fluid optical
flow equation (17) (last column Α  3072)
field goes also to zero. With the two Green functions
GF
2gx  2GFgx  gx (11)
GDg
x  GDgx  gx (12)
one gets the explicit system of second order equations that can
be solved by a standard method for initial value problems.
With either G  GF or G  GD the explicit version of the
equations (9) and (10) can be written as
Ρ ̈ux, t  G 	 F
  ΓG 	̇ux, t
  Ν ̇ux, t. (13)
Since this are second order equations, the numerical solution
is more expensive than the solution of the original fluid equa-
tion (1). For the image registration one is not interested in
oscillations, and the overdamped limit of the equations can
be taken by the assumption, that Ρ ̈ux, t is much smaller than
all other terms in the equation, so it can be neglected. Ap-
plying the differential operators of Eqns. (11) and (12) to the
two variants of Eqn. (13) one gets two new equations for the
image registration
Γ̇ux, t  Ν2 ̇ux, t  F (14)
for the optical flow-based registration and
Γ̇ux, t  Ν̇ux, t  F (15)
the diffusion-based registration. It should be noted, that for
Γ  0 one get the same formal result as for the fluid exten-
sion of the Navier-Lamé equation, i.e., replace formal the dis-
placements with the velocities. It should also be noted, that
the local damping force

fl removes the singularity of the dif-
ferential operators and acts as a regularisation. To reduce the
number of parameters in the method, it is convenient to ab-
sorb one in the scaled time variable t  t/Γ and to introduce
Α  Ν/Γ. This gives the final form of the fluid extensionof the
optical flow-based registration
̇ux, t  Α2 ̇ux, t  F (16)
and for the diffusion-based registration
̇ux, t  Α̇ux, t  F. (17)
3. NUMERICAL SOLUTION
For the two discretely sampled images the Eqns. (16) and (17)
will be solved on a regular grid. The partial derivatives in
space can be approximated by finite differences. For the bi-
harmonic operator in the optical flow-based equation the ex-
pression (25.3.33) from [8] is used, and the Laplace operator
in the diffusion-based version is approximated by expression
(25.3.31) [8]. Periodic boundary conditions for the compu-
tation of the explicit system of first order differential equa-
tions [9] are used. The initial value problem is solved using
an explicit generalized Runge-Kutta-method [10] with error
control and automatic step size adjustment.
2410
Fluid Diffusion Fluid Optical Flow
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
1.2
1.4
Fig. 3. Relative speed of the registration for the two examples
(left circle to “C” mapping and right the registration of the
hands) with the new equations to the execution time of the
fluid registration Eqn. (1)
4. EXAMPLES
The integration of the equations of motion is stopped when
the registered image Sx  ux does not change more than
2  102 per pixel. The intensities of sample and template
image are all normalized to the interval 0, 1.
The first example maps a circle on a 128  128 grid onto
the letter “C” (Figure 1). The results differ in those regions
where both sample and template image are black, and further
in the positions of singular points in the flow field. The vor-
tex on the edges of the letter is developed with all methods
because this vortex is needed for the correct image match.
As a second example we show the transformation of two
X-ray images of hands (Figure 2). Also in this case the results
are very similar. The overlayed displacement of the regular
mesh shows the lower smoothness of the fluid and diffusion
registration compared with the optical flow-based variant, be-
cause the optical flow require the smoothness higher deriva-
tives.
The comparison of the absolute speed of the new meth-
ods is not useful, because the absolute speed of the solution
depends on the implementation details solving Eqns. (16) and
(17). Our medium precision variable step size initial value
solver [10] should outperform any fixed time step integration.
That is the reason why only results relative to the solution of
equationname (1) are shown. The new equations show a sim-
ilar execution time than the original fluid registration. The
fluid diffusion registration is always 20% faster than the orig-
inal fluid registration and has similar smoothness properties
of the computed transformation. The optical flow-based ver-
sion is a bit slower but has superior smoothness properties.
5. CONCLUSIONS
We have presented two new equations for nonlinear image
registration based on the optical flow and the diffusion reg-
istration. Instead of the introduction of an artificial time, the
new equations require a smooth velocity field. Based on the
underlying variational approach, the design of special fluid-
like registration equations is possible by addition of future
constrains for the displacement or the velocity field.
6. REFERENCES
[1] Gary E. Christensen, Richard D. Rabbit, and Michael I.
Miller, “Deformable templates using large deformation
kinematics,” IEEE Transactions on Image Processing,
vol. 10, no. 5, pp. 1435–1447, 1996.
[2] Morten Bro-Nielsen and Claus Gramkow, “Fast fluid
registration of medical images,” in VBC’96: Pro-
ceedings of the 4th International Conference on Visu-
alization in Biomedical Computing. 1996, pp. 267–276,
Springer-Verlag.
[3] Ulf-Dietrich Braumann and Jens-Peer Kuska, “A new
equation for nonlinear image registration with control
over the vortex structure in the displacement field,” in
Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on
Image Processing. Oct. 2006, pp. 329–332, IEEE Signal
Processing Society.
[4] Yali Amit, “A nonlinear variational problem for image
matching,” SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, vol.
15, no. 1, pp. 207–224, Jan. 1994.
[5] Jan Modersitzki, Numerical Methods for Image Regis-
tration, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2004.
[6] Bernd Fischer and Jan Modersitzki, “Fast diffusion reg-
istration,” Contemporary Mathematics, vol. 313, pp.
117–129, 2002.
[7] Bernd Fischer and Jan Modersitzki, “Curvature based
image registration,” Journal of Mathematical Imaging
and Vision, vol. 18, pp. 81–85, Jan. 2003.
[8] Milton Abramowitz and Irene A. Stegun, Pocketbook of
Mathematical Functions, Verlag Harri Deutsch, Frank-
furt/Main, 1984.
[9] Matteo Frigo and Steven G. Johnson, “The design and
implementation of FFTW3,” Proceedings of the IEEE,
vol. 93, no. 2, 2005, special issue on “Program Genera-
tion, Optimization, and Adaptation”.
[10] James H. Verner, “Differentiable interpolants for high-
order Runge-Kutta methods,” SIAM Joural Numerical
Analysis, vol. 30, no. 5, pp. 1446–1466, 1993.
2411


Fast fluid extensions for image registration algorithms

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=0E20ABCF14D961C977CB33B81B2C96E0?doi=10.1.1.1070.2317&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Fast fluid extensions for image registration algorithms

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

CiteSeerX