Elastic registration of medical images through multiquadric method.
OBJECTIVE: To improve the precision and reliability of elastic registration of the medical images and to simplify the registration process. METHODS: Previous study concerning elastic registration mostly focused on manual selection of the landmarks and then use of adequate interpolating for elastic transformation. The landmarks extraction, however, was prone to error that often showed impact on the registration results, besides the difficulty and time consumption of manual identification of the landmarks. On the basis of Multiquadric method that allowed smooth adjustment of the parameters, we utilized a semi-automatic method to extract the landmarks by combining these 2 steps, and proposed a novel registration method. RESULTS: Using this method for medical image elastic registration, rapid and accurate registration between standard and deformed images was achieved. CONCLUSION: The method proposed presently is accurate, convenient and reliable.