Feature-Based Non-rigid Registration of Serial Section Images by Blending Rigid Transformations

Abstract

In this paper, we describe feature-based nonrigid registration of histological serial section images. Our method represents non-rigid deformation by blending the rigid transformations estimated in the local region around a control point. This approach can efficiently represent nonrigid deformation with a smaller number of control points than conventional methods that interpolate displacement, such as free-form deformation (FFD). A feature-based approach is adopted to extract the control points and robustly estimate the local rigid transformation at each control point. By blending the rigid transformations, the displacement at each pixel is computed as a transformation field. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective for achieving non-rigid registration efficiently and robustly for histological serial section images.