Robust medical image registration based on phase congruency and regional mutual information

Abstract

In this paper, a new approach of multi-modality image registration is represented with not only image intensity, but also features describing image structure. There are two novelties in the proposed method. First, instead of standard mutual information based on joint intensity histogram, a graph-based implementation of multi-dimensional regional mutual information is employed, which allows neighbourhood information to be taken into account. Second, a new feature image is obtained by means of phase congruency, which is invariant to brightness or contrast changes. By incorporating these features and intensity into regional mutual information, we can combine aspects of both structural and neighbourhood information together, which offers a more robust and a high level of registration accuracy that is essential in application to the medical domain.

Keywords:

• non-rigid image registration
• phase congruency
• regional mutual information
• local image structure
• graphs

This work is partially supported by the National Science Foundation of China (Project no. 31000450) and the Major State Basic Research Development Program of China (973 Program, no. 2010CB732500). The authors also gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of the reviewers, which have improved the presentation.