Feature based registration of thorax x-ray images for lung disease diagnosis

In diagnosing lung diseases using x-ray images of a human thorax, there is a huge risk of error in detecting abnormalities of the lung. This may be caused by geometric differences in the images that are being compared. To minimize the possible errors, a system is proposed to assist in the diagnosis process. In implementing this system, a registration process of the images is required as the first step in minimizing the human errors. A feature based method is used to solve the registration of images by using a scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) as the method of feature extraction. Using this feature based method is hoped to result in a better registration than the area based method that was previously used.