This paper describes a new approach to register images obtained from different modalities. Differential operators in scale space are used to extract geometric features from the images corresponding to similar structures. The resulting feature images may be matched by minimizing some function of the distances between the features in the respective images. Our first application concerns matching of brain images. We discuss a differential operator that produces ridge-like feature images from which the center curve of the cranium is easily extracted in CT and MRI. Results of the performance of these operators in 2-D matching tasks are presented. In addition, the potential of this approach for multimodality matching of 3-D medical images is illustrated by the striking similarity of the ridge images extracted from CT and MR images by the 3-D version of the operator.

Date Published: 22 September 1992
PDF: 15 pages
Proc. SPIE 1808, Visualization in Biomedical Computing '92, (22 September 1992); doi: 10.1117/12.131076

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1808:
Visualization in Biomedical Computing '92
Richard A. Robb, Editor(s)