A statistical bone density atlas and deformable medical image registration

Our research focuses on anatomical atlases and medical image registration. Anatomical atlases are useful tools to study human anatomical structures and diagnose abnormal anatomical variations. Registration techniques enable two subjects to be analyzed in a common frame of reference.; We propose a statistical bone density atlas and develop methods for its construction. The atlas is represented as a tetrahedral mesh structure equipped with embedded Bernstein polynomial density functions on the barycentric coordinates of the tetrahedron. And the prior information of both shape properties and density properties of the anatomical structure is incorporated in the atlas.; Investigations on deformable 2D/3D and 3D/3D registration between the statistical atlas and medical images like CT and X-rays have been carried out. Our deformable registration method utilizes both the shape properties and the density properties of the model, together with the prior information extracted from a training set. Several validation experiments have been conducted using CT images and simulated projection images.