A variational approach to multi-modal image matching

We address the problem of nonparametric multi-modal image matching. We propose a generic framework which relies on a global variational formulation and show its versatility through three different multi-modal registration methods: supervised registration by joint intensity learning, maximization of the mutual information and maximization of the correlation ratio. Regularization is performed by using a functional borrowed from linear elasticity theory. We also consider a geometry-driven regularization method. Experiments on synthetic images and preliminary results on the realignment of MRI datasets are presented.