User-Assisted Approach for Accurate Nonrigid Registration of Images and Traces

Fully automated registration algorithms are prone to getting trapped in solutions corresponding to local minima of their objective functions, leading to errors that are easy to detect but challenging to correct. Traditional solutions often involve iterative parameter tuning, data preprocessing and preregistering, and multiple algorithm reruns--an approach that is both time-consuming and does not guarantee satisfactory results. Therefore, for tasks where registration accuracy is more important than speed, it is appropriate to explore alternative, user-assisted registration strategies. In such tasks, finding and correcting errors in automated registration is often more time-consuming than directly integrating user input during the registration process. Therefore, this study evaluates a user-assisted approach for accurate nonrigid registration of images and traces. By leveraging the corresponding sets of fiducial points provided by the user to guide the registration, the algorithm computes an optimal nonrigid transformation that combines linear and nonlinear components. Our findings demonstrate that the registration accuracy of this approach improves consistently with the increased complexity of the linear transformation and as more fiducial points are provided. As a result, accuracy sufficient for many biomedical applications can be achieved within minutes, requiring only a small number of user-provided fiducial points.