User:Mim.cis/sandbox/Diffeomorphometry

Further information: LDDMM

Main article: Computational anatomy

Diffeomorphometry is the metric study of imagery, shape and form in the discipline of Computational anatomy (CA) in medical imaging. The study of images in computational anatomy rely on high-dimensional diffeomorphism groups $\varphi \in \operatorname {Diff} _{V}$ which generate orbits of the form ${\mathcal {I}}\doteq \{\varphi \cdot I\mid \varphi \in \operatorname {Diff} _{V}\}$, in which images $I\in {\mathcal {I}}$ can be dense scalar magnetic resonce or computed axial tomography images. For deformable shapes these are the collection of manifolds ${\mathcal {M}}\doteq \{\varphi \cdot M\mid \varphi \in \operatorname {Diff} _{V}\}$, points, curves and surfaces. In CA, these orbits are in general considered smooth Riemannian manifolds since at every point of the manifold $I\in {\mathcal {I}},M\in {\mathcal {M}}$ there is an inner product inducing the norm $\|\cdot \|_{I},\|\cdot \|_{M}$ on the tangent space that varies smoothly from point to point in the manifolds. This is generated by viewing the group of diffeomorphisms $\varphi \in \operatorname {Diff} _{V}$ as a Riemannian manifold with $\|\cdot \|_{\varphi }$, associated to the tangent space at $\varphi \in \operatorname {Diff} _{V}$ . This induces the norm and metric on the orbits of images and or shape manifolds under the action from the group of diffeomorphisms. The metric is constructed as the shortest length flow of diffeomorphisms connecting one image or shape to another.

The study of metrics on groups of diffeomorphisms and the study of metrics between manifolds and surfaces has been an area of significant investigation. In Computational anatomy, the diffeomorphometry metric measures how close and far two shapes or images are from each other. Informally, the metric length is the shortest length or geodesic flow which carries one coordinate system into the other.

Oftentimes, the familiar Euclidean metric is not directly applicable because the patterns of shapes and images don't form a vector space. In the Riemannian orbit model of Computational anatomy, diffeomorphisms acting on the forms $\phi \cdot I\in {\mathcal {I}},\phi \in Diff_{V},M\in {\mathcal {M}}$ don't act linearly. There are many ways to define metrics, and for the sets associated to shapes the Hausdorff metric is another. The method we use to induce the Riemannian metric is used to induce the metric on the orbit of shapes by defining it in terms of the metric length between diffeomorphic coordinate system transformations of the flows. Measuring the lengths of the geodesic flow between coordinates systems in the orbit of shapes is called diffeomorphometry.

The diffeomorphisms group generated as Lagrangian and Eulerian flows

The diffeomorphisms in computational anatomy are generated to satisfy the Lagrangian and Eulerian specification of the flow fields, $\varphi _{t},t\in [0,1]$, generated via the ordinary differential equation

${\frac {d}{dt}}\varphi _{t}=v_{t}\circ \varphi _{t},\ \varphi _{0}=\operatorname {id} ;$ Lagrangian flow

with the Eulerian vector fields $v\doteq (v_{1},v_{2},v_{3})$ in ${\mathbb {R} }^{3}$ for $v_{t}={\dot {\varphi }}_{t}\circ \varphi _{t}^{-1},t\in [0,1]$, with the inverse for the flow given by

${\frac {d}{dt}}\varphi _{t}^{-1}=-(D\varphi _{t}^{-1})v_{t},\ \varphi _{0}^{-1}=\operatorname {id} ,$ Eulerianflow

and the $3\times 3$ Jacobian matrix for flows in $\mathbb {R} ^{3}$ given as $\ D\varphi \doteq \left({\frac {\partial \varphi _{i}}{\partial x_{j}}}\right).$

To ensure smooth flows of diffeomorphisms with inverse, the vector fields ${\mathbb {R} }^{3}$ must be at least 1-time continuously differentiable in space which are modelled as elements of the Hilbert space $(V,\|\cdot \|_{V})$ using the Sobolev embedding theorems so that each element $v_{i}\in H_{0}^{3},i=1,2,3,$ has 3-square-integrable derivatives thusly implies $(V,\|\cdot \|_{V})$ embeds smoothly in 1-time continuously differentiable functions. The diffeomorphism group are flows with vector fields absolutely integrable in Sobolev norm:

$\operatorname {Diff} _{V}\doteq \{\varphi =\varphi _{1}:{\dot {\varphi }}_{t}=v_{t}\circ \varphi _{t},\varphi _{0}=\operatorname {id} ,\int _{0}^{1}\|v_{t}\|_{V}\,dt<\infty \}\ .$ Diffeomorphism Group

The Riemannian orbit model

Shapes in Computational Anatomy (CA) are studied via the use of diffeomorphic mapping for establishing correspondences between anatomical coordinate systems. In this setting, 3-dimensional medical images are modelled as diffemorphic transformations of some exemplar, termed the template $I_{temp}$, resulting in the observed images to be elements of the random orbit model of CA. For images these are defined as $I\in {\mathcal {I}}\doteq \{I=I_{temp}\circ \varphi ,\varphi \in \operatorname {Diff} _{V}\}$, with for charts representing sub-manifolds denoted as ${\mathcal {M}}\doteq \{\varphi \cdot M_{temp}:\varphi \in \operatorname {Diff} _{V}\}$.

The Riemannian metric

The orbit of shapes and forms in Computational Anatomy are generated by the group action ${\mathcal {I}}\doteq \{\varphi \cdot I:\varphi \in \operatorname {Diff} _{V}\}$ , ${\mathcal {M}}\doteq \{\varphi \cdot M:\varphi \in \operatorname {Diff} _{V}\}$. These are made into a Riemannian orbits by introducing a metric associated to each point and associated tangent space. For this a metric is defined on the group which induces the metric on the orbit. Take as the metric for Computational anatomy at each element of the tangent space $\varphi \in \operatorname {Diff} _{V}$ in the group of diffeomorphisms

$\|{\dot {\varphi }}\|_{\varphi }\doteq \|{\dot {\varphi }}\circ \varphi ^{-1}\|_{V}=\|v\|_{V}$,

with the vector fields modelled to be in a Hilbert space with the norm in the Hilbert space $(V,\|\cdot \|_{V})$. We model $V$ as a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) defined by a 1-1, differential operator $A:V\rightarrow V^{*}$, where $V^{*}$ is the dual-space. In general, $\sigma \doteq Av\in V^{*}$ is a generalized function or distribution, the linear form associated to the inner-product and norm for generalized functions are interpreted by integration by parts according to for $v,w\in V$,

$\langle v,w\rangle _{V}\doteq \int _{X}Av\cdot w\,dx,\ \|v\|_{V}^{2}\doteq \int _{X}Av\cdot v\,dx,\ v,w\in V\ .$

When $Av\doteq \mu dx$, a vector density, $\int Av\cdot vdx\doteq \int \mu \cdot vdx$.

The differential operator is selected so that the Green's kernel associated to the inverse is sufficiently smooth so that the vector fields support 1-continuous derivative. The Sobolev embedding theorem arguments were made in demonstrating that 1-continuous derivative is required for smooth flows. The Green's operator generated from the Green's function(scalar case) associated to the differential operator smooths. For proper choice of $A$ then $(V,\|\cdot \|_{V})$ is an RKHS with the operator $K=A^{-1}:V^{*}\rightarrow V$. The Green's kernels associated to the differential operator smooths since since for controlling enough derivatives in the square-integral sense the kernel $k(\cdot ,\cdot )$ is continuously differentiable in both variables implying

$KAv(x)_{i}\doteq \sum _{j}\int _{{\mathbb {R} }^{3}}k_{ij}(x,y)Av_{j}(y)dy\in V\ .$

Diffeomorphometry: The metric space of shapes and forms

The right-invariant metric on diffeomorphisms

The metric on the group of diffeomorphisms is defined by the distance as defined on pairs of elements in the group of diffeomorphisms according to

:$d_{Diff_{V}}(\psi ,\varphi )=\inf _{v_{t}}\left(\int _{0}^{1}\int _{X}Av_{t}\cdot v_{t}dx\ dt:\phi _{0}=\psi ,\phi _{1}=\varphi ,{\dot {\phi }}_{t}=v_{t}\circ \phi _{t}\right)^{1/2}\ ;$ metric-diffeomorphisms

This distance provides a right-invariant metric of diffeomorphometry, invariant to reparameterization of space since for all $\phi \in \operatorname {Diff} _{V}$,

$d_{\operatorname {Diff} _{V}}(\psi ,\varphi )=d_{\operatorname {Diff} _{V}}(\psi \circ \phi ,\varphi \circ \phi ).$