Constant Flow Sampling: A Method to Automatically Select the Regularization Parameter in Image Registration

We present a method to automatically select the regularization parameter in the two-term compound cost function used in image registration. Our method is called CFS (Constant Flow Sampling). It samples the regularization parameter using the constraint that the warp-induced image flow be of constant magnitude on average. Compared to other methods, CFS provably provides a global solution at a specified precision and within a finite number of steps. CFS can be embedded within any algorithm minimizing a two-term compound cost function depending on a regularization parameter. We report experimental results on the registration of several datasets of laparoscopic images.