MRI Modality transformation in demon registration

Nonrigid local image registration plays an important role in medical imaging. In this paper we focus on demon registration which is introduced by Thirion [1], and is comparable to fluid registration. Because demon registration cannot deal with multiple MRI modalities, we introduce a MRI modality transformation which changes the representation of a T1 scan into a T2 scan using the peaks in a joint histogram. We compare the performance between demon registration with modality transformation, demon registration with gradient images and Rueckerts [2] B-spline based free form deformation method in combination with mutual information. For this test we use perfectly aligned T1 and T2 slices from the BrainWeb database [3], which we local spherically distort. In conclusion demon registration with modality transformation gives the smallest registration errors, in case of local large spherical distortions and small bias fields.