Matching of digitised brain atlas to magnetic resonance images

A method has been developed to match a standard digitised brain atlas onto MR images for identification of cerebral structures in anatomical images. This method uses, first, a three-dimensional crude registration based on the proportional system of Talairach. Then, a two-dimensional refined registration is performed using a deformation function based on a set of homologous landmarks on both images (MR and atlas). Displacements vectors are computed between each corresponding landmark. These vectors are interpolated by thin-plate splines, generating an unwarping function defined on the whole image. This function can then be applied on any structure of the atlas. An evaluation of the matching procedure has been performed. First, the influence of the choice of the landmarks has been evaluated for the fine registration method. The latter has been then compared to the crude registration method considered as a classical reference method. These results show the advantages of the fine registration approach.