Evaluation of a new optimisation algorithm for rigid registration of MRI data

We propose to use a recently introduced optimisation method in the context of rigid registration of medical images. This optimisation method, introduced by Powell and called NEWUOA, is compared with two other widely used algorithms: Powell's direction set and Nelder-Mead's downhill simplex method. This paper performs a comparative evaluation of the performances of these algorithms to optimise different image similarity measures for different mono- and multi-modal registrations. Images from the BrainWeb project are used as a gold standard for validation purposes. This paper exhibits that the proposed optimisation algorithm is more robust, more accurate and faster than the two other methods.