A preliminary study on non-rigid registration of abdominal CT images using bones

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a method of non-rigid registration of abdominal 3D CT images. First, gas regions are eliminated from reference and floating CT images based on a viscous-fluid transformation model. Then, 3D global transformation is performed by fitting bone structures in the images. Finally, we use a 3D non-rigid registration method based on the Thirion's demons algorithm and the Freiman's local-Affine estimation algorithm. This registration method is applied to actual images, and experimental results are shown.