Reconstruction of serially acquired slices using physics-based modeling

This paper presents an accurate, computationally efficient, fast, and fully automated algorithm for the alignment of two-dimensional (2-D) serially acquired sections forming a 3-D volume. The approach relies on the determination of interslice correspondences. The features used for correspondence are extracted by a 2-D physics-based deformable model parameterizing the object shape. Correspondence affinities and global constrains render the method efficient and reliable. The method accounts for one of the major shortcomings of 2-D slices alignment of a 3-D volume, namely variable and nonuniform thickness of the slices. Moreover, no particular alignment direction is privileged, avoiding global offsets, biases, and error propagation. The method was evaluated on real images and the experimental results demonstrated its accuracy, as reconstruction errors were smaller than I degree in rotation and smaller than 1 pixel in translation.