Fast no ground truth image registration accuracy evaluation: Comparison of bootstrap and Hessian approaches

Image registration algorithms provide a displacement field between two images. We consider the problem of estimating accuracy of the calculated displacement field from the input images only and without assuming any specific model for the deformation. We compare two algorithms: the first is based on bootstrap resampling, the second, new method, uses an estimate of the criterion Hessian matrix. We also present a block matching strategy using multiple window sizes where the final result is obtained by fusion of partial results controlled by the accuracy estimates for the blocks involved. Both accuracy estimation methods and the new registration strategy are experimentally compared on synthetic as well as real medical ultrasound data.