Distance transformation function for minimization of differences between three dimensional objects from medical images

Minimization of the differences between two objects extracted from images with two different modalities can be applied to the registration of multi-modal medical images. We present a methodology that uses a "distance transformation function" for representation of a "target" or "model" object and for estimation of the spatial difference of a "testing" object to the "model" so that, matching two 3-D objects from two images by minimization of the differences between them is useful to register the corresponding images. We have applied our method to register sequences of MRI images of the carotid artery to images from histology studies.