BRAINSFit: Mutual Information Registrations of Whole-Brain 3D Images, Using the Insight Toolkit

TLDR

The University of Iowa’s Psychiatric Iowa Neuroimaging Consortium (PINC) developed BRAINSFit, a mutual‑information registration program for 3‑D brain imaging that extends ITK registration examples with new transform and optimization options. The authors aimed to establish best practices for registering 3‑D rigid multimodal MRI of the human brain. They created the itk::MultiModal3DMutualRegistrationHelper class to streamline testing of various transform representations and optimizers, added the itk::ScaleVersor3DTransform to meet ITK standards, and built BRAINSFit on ITK’s registration framework with additional features. A current version of BRAINSFit is used daily at PINC for automated processing of acquired brain images. The project is hosted on NITRC (http://www.nitrc.org/projects/multimodereg/), where nightly source code releases and binary versions are available.

Abstract

The University of Iowa’s Psychiatric Iowa Neuroimaging Consortium (PINC) has developed a program for mutual information registration of 3D brain imaging data using ITK classes, called BRAINSFit. We have written a helper class, itk::MultiModal3DMutualRegistrationHelper to simplify implementation and testing of different transform representations and optimizers. We have added a transform meeting the ITK standard, itk::ScaleVersor3DTransform. BRAINSFit is based on the registration examples from ITK, but adds new features, including the ability to employ different transform representations and optimization functions. Our goal was to determine best practices for registering 3D rigid multimodal MRI of the human brain. A version of the current program is employed here at PINC daily for automated processing of acquired brain images. This project is managed on the NITRC site. http://www.nitrc.org/projects/multimodereg/ On the NITRC website, you can acquire the latest source code via SVN, or by downloading a compressed file which is generated every night. Binary versions are also available.