A PHYSICS-BASED COORDINATE TRANSFORMATION FOR 3-D IMAGE MATCHING

Many image matching schemes are based on mapping coordinate locations, such as the locations of landmarks, in one image to corresponding loc ations in a second image. A new approach to this mapping (coordinate t ransformation), called the elastic body spline (EBS), is described. Th e spline is based on a physical model of a homogeneous, isotropic thre e-dimensional (3-D) elastic body, The model can approximate the way th at some physical objects deform. The EBS as well as the affine transfo rmation, the thin plate spline [1], [2] and the volume spline [3] are used to match 3-D magnetic resonance images (MRI's) of the breast that are used in the diagnosis and evaluation of breast cancer. These coor dinate transformations are evaluated with different types of deformati ons and different numbers of corresponding (paired) coordinate locatio ns. In all but one of the cases considered, using the EBS yields more similar images than the other methods.