Fast musculoskeletal registration based on shape matching.

This paper presents a new method for computing elastic and plastic deformations in the context of discrete deformable model-based registration. Internal forces are estimated by averaging local transforms between reference and current particle positions. Our technique can accommodate large non-linear deformations, and is unconditionally stable. Moreover, it is simple to implement and versatile. We show how to tune model stiffness and computational cost, which is important for efficient registration, and demonstrate our technique in the complex problem of inter-patient musculoskeletal registration.