Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine
Volume 2013 (2013), Article ID 373082, 8 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/373082
Research Article

Nonrigid Medical Image Registration Based on Mesh Deformation Constraints

XiangBo Lin,1 Su Ruan,2 TianShuang Qiu,1 and DongMei Guo3

1Faculty of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
2Laboratory of Computer Science, Information Processing and Systems, University of Rouen, 76183 Rouen, France
3Department of Radiology, Second Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian 116027, China

Received 1 December 2012; Accepted 4 January 2013

Academic Editor: Peng Feng

Copyright © 2013 XiangBo Lin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Regularizing the deformation field is an important aspect in nonrigid medical image registration. By covering the template image with a triangular mesh, this paper proposes a new regularization constraint in terms of connections between mesh vertices. The connection relationship is preserved by the spring analogy method. The method is evaluated by registering cerebral magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) image data obtained from different individuals. Experimental results show that the proposed method has good deformation ability and topology-preserving ability, providing a new way to the nonrigid medical image registration.