CNN-Driven Quasiconformal Model for Large Deformation Image Registration
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Image registration has been widely studied over the past several decades, with numerous applications in science, engineering and medicine. Most of the conventional mathematical models for large deformation image registration rely on prescribed landmarks, which usually require tedious manual labeling and are prone to error. In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in the use of machine learning for image registration. However, most learning-based methods cannot ensure the bijectivity of the registration, which makes it difficult to establish a 1-1 correspondence between the images. In this paper, we develop a novel method for large deformation image registration by a fusion of convolutional neural network (CNN) and quasiconformal theory. More specifically, we propose a new fidelity term for incorporating the CNN features in our quasiconformal energy minimization model, which enables us to obtain meaningful registration results without prescribing any landmarks. Moreover, unlike other learning-based methods, the bijectivity of our method is guaranteed by quasiconformal theory. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. More broadly, our work sheds light on how rigorous mathematical theories and practical machine learning approaches can be integrated for developing computational methods with improved performance.
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