Parallel image registration using bio-inspired computing

In this paper it is proposed a parallel approach for the pixel intensity based image registration (IR) problem on multi-core processors. While IR is an optimization problem which computes the optimal parameters for a geometric transform, two classes of bio-inspired algorithms are studied: Bacterial Foraging Optimization Algorithm (BFOA) and Genetic Algorithm (GA). The optimal transform is applied to a source image in order to align it to a model image by maximizing a similarity measure. In the presented experiment, mutual information (MI) is used to evaluate the IR quality and most of the processing time is spent in this evaluation. The proposed parallel approach aims to reduce the processing time by using the full computing power of multi-core processors. A comparison of the sequential and parallel versions for different registration problems is presented.