Quantitative analysis, visualization and movement correction in dynamic processes
First Claim
1. A method for the quantitative and visual analysis of motion in a time sequence of images comprising:
- using a computer-implemented to perform the following steps;
a) determining the motion vectors for points in the image space between images of subsequent time steps by means of registration of images of an image sequence;
b) reconstruction of the space-time-structure within the image space and visualization thereof by means of at least one of the following steps b1) to b4);
b1) determining a point for a selectable moment, calculating automatically its position for other moments by a means of a transformation resulting from the registration as calculated in a) as well as determining and visualizing the interpolated representation of the path which relates to the determinined point and its calculated transformed positions as 3D rendered path;
b2) determining and visualizing a 3D rendered reference grid, deformed according to the transformation calculated in a), where the grid is optionally displayed successively for intermediate degrees of deformation from an undeformed until the deformation corresponding to the transformation calculated in a) where in a image record having several color channels, the reference grids corresponding to the different color channels are separately treated;
b3) color/pattern encoding (including gray value encoding) of quantities which are assigned to a point in the image/time space and where vector valued quantities are represented by a means of absolute values, for(i) all points, lying within an interactively selectable plane of the image space, or(ii) for any selected points or(iii) the points of the under b1) determinined path of the space; and
b4) a motion corrected representation of the paths or of any other means of visualization described in b2)-b3), where the motion is corrected by undoing the part of the motion which corresponds to a selected class of transformations and which is calculated by registration.
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Abstract
The invention relates to the quantitative analysis and/or visualization (virtual or real) of moving processes and to the detection, description, correction and the comparison of global movements inside the image space. The invention particularly relates to a method and device for precisely and, while being limited to few parameters, quantitatively describing the global and local movement occurring in the image space and for the single representation of the movement of the quantitative parameters with regard to the image space. A rough to fine recording and a detection of and compensation for global movements occurs whereby enabling a tracking and a corrected visualization. The detection of the movement, which corresponds as precisely as possible to the real movement occurring in the image space is effected by a splines a plaques minces recording technique that enables the number of movement parameters to be kept low. A fully automatic execution of all partial steps is made possible.
23 Citations
12 Claims
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1. A method for the quantitative and visual analysis of motion in a time sequence of images comprising:
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using a computer-implemented to perform the following steps; a) determining the motion vectors for points in the image space between images of subsequent time steps by means of registration of images of an image sequence; b) reconstruction of the space-time-structure within the image space and visualization thereof by means of at least one of the following steps b1) to b4); b1) determining a point for a selectable moment, calculating automatically its position for other moments by a means of a transformation resulting from the registration as calculated in a) as well as determining and visualizing the interpolated representation of the path which relates to the determinined point and its calculated transformed positions as 3D rendered path; b2) determining and visualizing a 3D rendered reference grid, deformed according to the transformation calculated in a), where the grid is optionally displayed successively for intermediate degrees of deformation from an undeformed until the deformation corresponding to the transformation calculated in a) where in a image record having several color channels, the reference grids corresponding to the different color channels are separately treated; b3) color/pattern encoding (including gray value encoding) of quantities which are assigned to a point in the image/time space and where vector valued quantities are represented by a means of absolute values, for (i) all points, lying within an interactively selectable plane of the image space, or (ii) for any selected points or (iii) the points of the under b1) determinined path of the space; and b4) a motion corrected representation of the paths or of any other means of visualization described in b2)-b3), where the motion is corrected by undoing the part of the motion which corresponds to a selected class of transformations and which is calculated by registration. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. A method implemented by a computer for registration by means of a confinement tree technique CTT, which uses one of,
a) confiner center points (CS) or confiner density maxima (CD) as critical points for registration and by using the method of structural outlier determination starting from an initial overlapping first determines corresponding confiner pairs and thereby only maintains pairs with best relPos on the basis of this determines the best fitting transformation, exerts on the data confiner and repeats this process iteratively, whereby the such determined landmarks can be used for the establishment of a “ - point distribution model”
; andb) corresponding confiners are determined as follows;
for knots, which occur after a bifurcation in the confinement tree (CT) of one of the images, the knots having the lowest relPos value in the CT of the other image are searched, the point outliers are thereby suppressed then the relPos distribution for all confiner pairs are examined, and confiner outliers are eliminated temporarily, whereupon a point registration method under consideration of corresponding confiners is applied to the confiner surface or contour points and this process is repeated iteratively,by an optional usage of first highly cut-down CTs and then increasingly less highly cut-down CTs a coarse to fine effect can be achieved in a) and b), and wherein the images are first highly smoothed, and in the proceeding of the method increasingly less highly smoothed.
- point distribution model”
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12. A method implemented by a computer for the registration of a data point (DP) set on a reference point (RP) set, which determines iteratively for a series of given transformation types, which allow an increasing number of local deformations, its free parameters in such a manner, that an error functional is minimized, which compares the positions of the transformed data points with those of the reference points, thereby selecting as transformation types first a rigid (rotation and translation), then an affine transformation and then transformation types, defined by a number of checkpoints, which can freely be displaced and between the displacement vectors of which with thin-plate splines is interpolated and, the number of control points is iteratively increased in order to allow an increasing number of local deformation, and the initial position of the control points is adapted to the shape formed of the data points and the reference points or the relative position thereof, particularly for the determination of the initial position of the control points a point-clustering-algorithm is exerted on the data point set, whereby each data point can be weighted depending on its distance to the next reference point, and cluster center are selected as the initial control point positions, and a sum of the quadratic distances of each DP to the next RP is selected as error functional whereby outliers can be suppressed based upon at least of:
- (i) starting from the distribution of the distances between the data points and the next reference point, all data points having higher distances as the median of the distribution are eliminated or (ii) instead of the quadratic distances another function of the distance is used.
Specification