Medical image segmentation, volume representation and registration using spheres in the geometric algebra framework

This paper presents an algorithm to model volumetric data and other one for non-rigid registration of such models using spheres formulated in the geometric algebra framework. The proposed algorithm for modeling, as opposite to the Union of Spheres method, reduces the number of entities (spheres) used to model 3D data. Our proposal is based in marching cubes idea using, however, spheres, while the Union of Spheres uses Delaunay tetrahedrization. The non-rigid registration is accomplished in a deterministic annealing scheme. At the preprocessing stage we segment the objects of interest by a segmentation method based on texture information. This method is embedded in a region growing scheme. As our final application, we present a scheme for surgical object tracking using again geometric algebra techniques. (c) 2006 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.