Three-dimensional image registration for spiral CT angiography

This paper presents a 3D image registration approach to 3D CT angiography (CTA). We extend the interest operator from 2D to 3D in order to extract 3D feature points and develop a 3D image flow algorithm to find matches of feature points between the mask and the contrast data sets. A robust 3D motion estimation algorithm is also developed which handles outliers up to 50% of all computed image flow vectors. The subtracted volume after motion correction is rendered on the display. The proposed algorithm has been successfully applied to a clinical CTA data set and the result is very promising