Landmark correspondence optimization for coupled surfaces

Volumetric layers are often encountered in medical images. Unlike solid structures, volumetric layers are characterized by double and nested bounding surfaces. It is expected that better statistical models can be built by utilizing the surface coupleness rather than simply applying the landmarking method on each of them separately. We propose an approach to optimizing the landmark correspondence on the coupled surfaces by minimizing the description length that incorporates local thickness gradient. The evaluations are performed on a set of 2-D synthetic close coupled contours and a set of real-world open surfaces, the skull vaults. Compared with performing landmarking separately on the coupled surfaces, the proposed method constructs models that have better generalization ability and specificity.