Adaptive fuzzy-SIFT rule-based registration for 3D cardiac motion estimation

摘要

3D Speckle tracking techniques are used to quantify cardiac deformation in 3D echocardiographic images. Elastic image registration methods are successful in solving 3D speckle tracking problems. However, a suitable solution should be exploited to deal with the poor spatio-temporal resolution in the echocardiographic images. That is why the registration problem may encounter some challenges in representing accurate features and defining suitable geometric transformation. The strong modeling ability of a fuzzy rule-based inference system can aid the challenge in geometric modeling. This paper, thus, aims to solve the 3D speckle tracking problem in a new scheme through a fuzzy modeling procedure. The algorithm begins to work by extracting a well-suited local feature descriptor, scale- invariant feature transform (SIFT). Then, the relevant features are aligned with sets of fuzzy rules the optimum parameters of which are adaptively learned in the hybrid learning process of adaptive-neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) structure. Applying the adaptive fuzzy method on STRAUS synthetic dataset yields an acceptable tracking error below 1 mm. Further, strain analysis indicates the capacity of the proposed method in discriminating pathological diagnosis from a healthy one.