System and method for verifying registration accuracy in digital medical images

A method of verifying a registration of a digital image, said method comprising the steps of:

• receiving a reference image and a moving image that has been registered to said reference image, wherein said reference image and said moving image are representations of a same object, wherein each said image comprises a plurality of intensities defined for a 3D domain of points;
• selecting a symmetry axis in the object represented in the image;
• selecting one or more landmarks in said images, and defining a neighborhood in the domain of each image near each selected landmark;
• and
• calculating a quality measure QM from
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• wherein the sum is over landmarks, the weights wi are determined from test data, d is a distance metric for comparing two sets of data, Smov+(i) and Smov−(i) express the features extracted from each landmark i in their respective neighborhoods of said registered moving image on either side of the symmetry axis, and Sref+(i) and Sref−(i) express the features extracted from each landmark i in their respective neighborhoods of said reference image on either side of the symmetry axis.

A program storage device readable by a computer, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the computer to perform the method steps for verifying a registration of a digital image, said method comprising the steps of:

• receiving a reference image and a moving image that has been registered to said reference image, wherein said reference image and said moving image are representations of a same object, wherein each said image comprises a plurality of intensities defined for a 3D domain of points;
• selecting one or more landmarks in said images, and defining a neighborhood in the domain of each image near each selected landmark;
• extracting feature sets from the neighborhoods for the reference image and the registered moving image;
• calculating a total quality measure of the registration of the moving image from a distance metric applied to the feature sets extracted from the neighborhoods of the reference image and the registered moving image;
• comparing the total quality measure to a threshold determined from a reference atlas for the object represented in the image;
• and
• determining whether to accept or reject the registration of the moving image based on the comparison result.