Image registration for DSA quality enhancement.

A generalized framework for histogram-based similarity measures is presented and applied to the image-enhancement task in digital subtraction angiography (DSA). The class of differentiable, strictly convex weighting functions is identified as suitable weightings of histograms for measuring the degree of clustering that goes along with registration. With respect to computation time, the energy similarity measure is the function of choice for the registration of mask and contrast image prior to subtraction. The robustness of the energy measure is studied for geometrical image distortions like rotation and scaling. Additionally, it is investigated how the histogram binning and inhomogeneous motion inside the templates influence the quality of the similarity measure. Finally, the registration success for the automated procedure is compared with the manually shift-corrected image pair of the head.