Image registration by normalized mapping

A new non-rigid registration method is proposed for the bladder magnetic resonance (MR) images. The key point is normalized mapping, which transforms any image into an intermediate space. Under the uniform space, those anatomical feature points of different images are corresponded by rotating and scaling. In addition, the non-rigid registration is utilized under the application of groupwise registration. By registering a set of images, an unbiased template can be obtained. Based on this template, the analysis towards the group of images can be easily conducted. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can register accurately the target image to the reference image. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.