AR-UNet: A Deformable Image Registration Network with Cyclic Training

Deformable image registration is a process to determine the non-linear spatial correspondence among deformed image pairs. Generative registration network is a novel structure involving a generative registration network and a discriminative network that encourages the former to generate better results. We propose an Attention Residual UNet (AR-UNet) to estimate the complicated deformation field. The model is trained using perceptual cyclic constraints. As an unsupervised method, we require labelling for training and use virtual data augmentation to improve the robustness of the proposed model. We also introduce comprehensive metrics for image registration comparison. Experimental results show quantitative evidence that the method can predict reliable deformation field at a reasonable speed and outperform conventional learning based and non-learning based deformable image registration methods.