Landmark and intensity based image registration using free form deformation

The registration of images is a fundamental task in numerous applications in medical image processing. In this paper, a novel registration technique is proposed which combines landmark and intensity based approaches. In this framework, the free form deformation (FFD) is used as transformation which is the key point of our algorithm. Landmarks with FFD transformation define the guidance surface which increases robustness of intensity based registration to bias field (bias noise). In fact, the performance of registration is improved by matching both landmark and intensity information. The experimental results show that the proposed method is more accurate than only intensity based method (Mutual Information). Also, user can identify the region of interest for registration which makes method more applicable and useful for practical uses.