Projects:RegistrationRegularization

Collaborators: B.T. Thomas Yeo (MIT), Mert Sabuncu (MIT), Rahul Desikan (BU), Polina Golland (MIT), Bruce Fischl (MGH).

We propose a unified framework for computing atlases from manually labeled data sets at various degrees of “sharpness” and the joint registration and segmentation of a new brain with these atlases. In non-rigid registration, the tradeoff between warp regularization and image fidelity is typically set empirically. In segmentation, this leads to a probabilistic atlas of arbitrary “sharpness”: weak regularization results in well-aligned training images, producing a “sharp” atlas; strong regularization yields a “blurry” atlas. We study the effects of this tradeoff in the context of cortical surface parcellation, but the framework applies to volume registration as well.

Results

We compare three special cases of our framework, namely:

(1) Progressive registration of a new brain to increasingly “sharp” atlases using increasingly flexible warps, by initializing each registration stage with the optimal warps from a “blurrier” atlas. We call this multiple atlases, multiple warp scales (MAMS).

(2) Progressive registration to a single atlas with increasingly flexible warps. We call this single atlas, multiple warp scales (SAMS).

(3) Registration to a single atlas with fixed constrained warps. We call this single atlas, single warp scale (SASS).