Abstract: Soft Tissue Modeling with the Chainmail Approach

For deformable image registration in the context of medical applications, the choice of the transformation model determines the level of detail with which the human anatomy can be described. Transformation models, which are based on physical descriptions and allow for detailed modeling, like finite element or massspring models, however, require high computation times. Fast models based on e.g. splines or diffusion, on the other hand, rely on interpolation between landmarks in high contrast regions of the images and lack anatomical correctness, especially in soft tissue. Therefore, we have developed a heterogeneous transformation model based on the chainmail approach [1] with the aim of improving the characteristic deformation behavior of soft tissue within short calculation times.