Automated 3D nonlinear deformation procedure for determination of gross morphometric variability in human brain

We describe an automated method to register MRI volumetric datasets to a digital human brain model. The technique employs 3D non-linear warping based on the estimation of local deformation fields using cross-correlation of invariant intensity features derived from image data. Results of the non-linear registration on a simple phantom, a complex brain phantom and real MRI data are presented. Anatomical variability is expressed with respect to the Talairach-like standardized brain-based coordinate system of the model. We show that the automated non-linear registration reduces the inter-subject variability of homologous points in standardized space by 15% over linear registration methods. A 3D variability map is shown.