Langevin equations for landmark image registration with uncertainty

Tony Shardlow, Stephen Marsland

OAI: oai:purehost.bath.ac.uk:openaire_cris_publications/546aab1e-cc10-4e3d-a608-46bbaaf1b559 • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1137/16M1079282

Registration of images parameterized by landmarks provides a useful method of describing shape variations by computing the minimum-energy time-dependent deformation field that flows from one landmark set to the other. This is sometimes known as the geodesic interpolating spline and can be solved via a Hamiltonian boundary-value problem to give a diffeomorphic registration between images. However, small changes in the positions of the landmarks can produce large changes in the resulting diffeomorphism. We formulate a Langevin equation for looking at small random perturbations of this registration. The Langevin equation and three computationally convenient approximations are introduced and used as prior distributions. A Bayesian framework is then used to compute a posterior distribution for the registration, and also to formulate an average of multiple sets of landmarks.