A deformable surface-spine model for 3-D surface registration

A finite-element deformable surface-spine model is developed in this paper to register two surfaces by recovering the nonlinear deformation with respect to each other. The deformable surface-spine model is a dynamic model governed by Lagrangian motion equations. A 9 degree-of-freedom (dof) finite-element surface element and a 4-dof spine element are developed to iteratively solve Lagrangian equations for computing the deformation between two surfaces. The method has been applied to registration of computerized surgical prostate models. Experimental results have demonstrated that the new registration method can successfully match complex-structured surfaces by recovering the nonlinear deformation.