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imregdemons

Estimate displacement field that aligns two 2-D or 3-D images

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Syntax

[D,moving_reg] = imregdemons(moving,fixed)
[D,moving_reg] = imregdemons(moving,fixed,N)
[D,moving_reg] = imregdemons(___,Name,Value)

Description

[D,moving_reg] = imregdemons(moving,fixed) estimates the displacement field D that aligns the image to be registered, moving, with the reference image, fixed. The displacement vectors at each pixel location map locations from the fixed image grid to a corresponding location in the moving image. moving_reg is a warped version of the moving image that is warped according to the displacement field D and resampled using linear interpolation.

example

[D,moving_reg] = imregdemons(moving,fixed,N) specifies the number of iterations to be computed. This function does not use a convergence criterion and therefore is always guaranteed to run for the specified or default number of iterations.

[D,moving_reg] = imregdemons(___,Name,Value) registers the moving image using name-value pairs to control aspects of weight computation.

example

Examples

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Open Live Script

This example shows how to solve a registration problem in which the same hand has been photographed in two different poses. The misalignment of the images varies locally throughout each image. This is therefore a non-rigid registration problem.

Read the two images into the workspace.

fixed  = imread('hands1.jpg');
moving = imread('hands2.jpg');

Convert the images to grayscale for processing.

fixed  = im2gray(fixed);
moving = im2gray(moving);

Observe the initial misalignment. Fingers are in different poses.

imshowpair(fixed,moving,'montage')

Figure contains an axes object. The hidden axes object contains an object of type image.

Overlay the two images to make it easy to see where the images differ. The differences are highlighted in green and magenta.

imshowpair(fixed,moving)

Figure contains an axes object. The hidden axes object contains an object of type image.

Correct illumination differences between the moving and fixed images using histogram matching. This is a common pre-processing step.

moving = imhistmatch(moving,fixed);

Estimate the transformation needed to bring the two images into alignment.

[~,movingReg] = imregdemons(moving,fixed,[500 400 200],...
    'AccumulatedFieldSmoothing',1.3);

Display the results of the registration. In the first figure, the images are overlaid to show the alignment. 

imshowpair(fixed,movingReg)

Figure contains an axes object. The hidden axes object contains an object of type image.

imshowpair(fixed,movingReg,'montage')

Figure contains an axes object. The hidden axes object contains an object of type image.

Input Arguments

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Image to be registered, specified as a 2-D or 3-D grayscale image.

Data Types: single | double | int8 | int16 | int32 | uint8 | uint16 | uint32 | logical

Reference image in the target orientation, specified as a 2-D or 3-D grayscale image.

Data Types: single | double | int8 | int16 | int32 | uint8 | uint16 | uint32 | logical

Number of iterations, specified as a positive integer scalar or vector.

When you specify a vector, N is the number of iterations per pyramid level (resolution level). For example, if there are 3 pyramid levels, then you can specify the vector [100,50,25], where imregdemons performs 100 iterations at the lowest resolution level, 50 iterations at the next pyramid level, and 25 iterations at the last iteration level — the level with full resolution. Because it takes less time to process the lower resolution levels, running more iterations at low resolution and fewer iterations at the higher resolutions of the pyramid can help performance.

Data Types: single | double | int8 | int16 | int32 | uint8 | uint16 | uint32

Name-Value Arguments

Specify optional pairs of arguments as Name1=Value1,...,NameN=ValueN, where Name is the argument name and Value is the corresponding value. Name-value arguments must appear after other arguments, but the order of the pairs does not matter.

Before R2021a, use commas to separate each name and value, and enclose Name in quotes.

Example: 'AccumulatedFieldSmoothing',1.5 applies Gaussian smoothing with a standard deviation of 1.5 at each iteration

Smoothing applied at each iteration, specified as the comma-separated pair consisting of 'AccumulatedFieldSmoothing' and a numeric value. This parameter controls the amount of diffusion-like regularization. imregdemons applies the standard deviation of the Gaussian smoothing to regularize the accumulated field at each iteration. Larger values result in smoother output displacement fields. Smaller values result in more localized deformation in the output displacement field. Values typically are in the range [0.5, 3.0]. When you specify multiple PyramidLevels, the standard deviation used in the Gaussian smoothing remains the same at each pyramid level.

Data Types: double

Number of multi-resolution image pyramid levels to use, specified as the comma-separated pair consisting of 'PyramidLevels' and a positive integer.

Data Types: double

Display wait bar to indicate progress, specified as the comma-separated pair consisting of 'DisplayWaitbar' and the value true or false. When set to true, imregdemons displays a wait bar to indicate progress for long-running operations. To prevent imregdemons from displaying a wait bar, set DisplayWaitbar to false.

Data Types: single | double | int8 | int16 | int32 | int64 | uint8 | uint16 | uint32 | uint64 | logical

Output Arguments

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Displacement field, specified as a numeric array. Displacement values are in units of pixels.

  • If fixed is a 2-D grayscale image of size m-by-n, then the displacement field array is m-by-n-by-2. D(:,:,1) contains displacements along the x-axis and D(:,:,2) contains displacements along the y-axis.

  • If fixed is a 3-D grayscale image of size m-by-n-by-p, then the displacement field array is m-by-n-by-p-by-3. D(:,:,:,1) contains displacements along the x-axis, D(:,:,:,2) contains displacements along the y-axis, and D(:,:,:,3) contains displacements along the z-axis.

Data Types: double

Registered image, returned as a 2-D or 3-D grayscale image. The image is warped according to the displacement field D and resampled using linear interpolation.

Tips

  • To transform an image using the displacement field D, use imwarp.

References

[1] Thirion, J.-P. "Image matching as a diffusion process: an analogy with Maxwell’s demons". Medical Image Analysis. Vol. 2, Number 3, 1998, pp. 243–260.

[2] Vercauteren, T., X. Pennec, A. Perchant, N. Ayache, "Diffeomorphic Demons: Efficient Non-parametric Image Registration", NeuroImage. Vol. 45, Number 1, Supplement 1, March 2009, pp. 61–72.

Extended Capabilities

Version History

Introduced in R2014b

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See Also

Apps

Functions