Automated registration for augmenting micro-CT 3D images

Micro-CT imaging allows probing of material 3D structure down to the micrometre scale. However, often there exists structure at the sub-micrometre scale which significantly influences the macro-physical properties of the material. One possible solution for mitigating this micro-CT resolution limitation is to incorporate information from higher resolution Back-scattered Scanning Electron Microscopy (BSEM) imaging techniques. A first step toward incorporating this high resolution data into micro-CT models is to align the BSEM 2D image(s) with the corresponding region(s) of the micro-CT 3D image. This article presents an automated multi-start multi-resolution parallel registration algorithm which has been successfully used to achieve accurate alignment of BSEM and micro-CT image pairs. References William H. Press, Brian P. Flannery, Saul A. Teukolsky, and William T. Vetterling. Numerical Recipes in {C}: The Art of Scientific Computing . Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, October 1992. http://www.nrbook.com/a/bookcpdf.php B. Zitova and J. Flusser. Image registration methods: a survey. Image and Vision Computing , 21:977--1000, 2003. doi:{10.1016/S0262-8856(03)00137-9} L. G. Brown. A survey of image registration techniques. ACM Computing Surveys , 24:325--376, 1992. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=146370.146374 Mark Jenkinson and Stephen Smith. A global optimisation method for robust affine registration of brain images. Medical Image Analysis , 5:143--156, June 2001. doi:{10.1016/S1361-8415(01)00036-6} C. D. Kuglin and D. C. Hines. The phase correlation image alignment method. In Proc. Int. Conf. on Cybernetics and Society , volume 4, pages 163--165, 1975. G.S. Padhy, C. Lemaire, E.S. Amirtharaj, and M.A. Ioannidis. Pore size distribution in multiscale porous media as revealed by {DDIF-NMR}, mercury porosimetry and statistical image analysis. Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects , 300:222--234, June 2007. doi:{10.1016/j.colsurfa.2006.12.039}