Curvature guided surface registration using level sets

We present a new approach for non-rigid surface-registration of 3D objects. By representing the surfaces as the zero-level of a signed distance function in 3D space, our algorithm becomes independent of topology. We propose an extension of Thirion’s Demons algorithm to register the distance images. Our extension includes the use of a curvature term to guide the registration in the direction tangential to the zero level set. Our experiments show that our algorithm is suitable to register objects of complex topology, such as human skulls. Further, the curvature term leads to better correspondence in comparison to the standard Demons algorithm.