Finite-Dimensional Lie Algebras for Fast Diffeomorphic Image Registration

This paper presents a fast geodesic shooting algorithm for diffeomorphic image registration. We first introduce a novel finite-dimensional Lie algebra structure on the space of bandlimited velocity fields. We then show that this space can effectively represent initial velocities for diffeomorphic image registration at much lower dimensions than typically used, with little to no loss in registration accuracy. We then leverage the fact that the geodesic evolution equations, as well as the adjoint Jacobi field equations needed for gradient descent methods, can be computed entirely in this finite-dimensional Lie algebra. The result is a geodesic shooting method for large deformation metric mapping (LDDMM) that is dramatically faster and less memory intensive than state-of-the-art methods. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our model to register 3D brain images and compare its registration accuracy, runtime, and memory consumption with leading LDDMM methods. We also show how our algorithm breaks through the prohibitive time and memory requirements of diffeomorphic atlas building.