IIRP-Net: Iterative Inference Residual Pyramid Network for Enhanced Image Registration

Tai Ma, Suwei Zhang, Jiafeng Li, Ying Wen

Abstract: Deep learning-based image registration (DLIR) meth-ods have achieved remarkable success in deformable im-age registration. We observe that iterative inference can exploit the well-trained registration network to the fullest extent. In this work, we propose a novel Iterative Inference Residual Pyramid Network (IIRP-Net) to enhance registration performance without any additional training costs. In IIRP-Net, we construct a streamlined pyramid registration network consisting of a feature extractor and residual flow estimators (RP-Net) to achieve generalized capabilities in feature extraction and registration. Then, in the inference phase, IIRP-Net employs an iterative inference strategy to enhance RP-Net by iteratively reutilizing residual flow es-timators from coarse to fine. The number of iterations is adaptively determined by the proposed IterStop mecha-nism. We conduct extensive experiments on the FLARE and Mindboggle datasets and the results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, outperforming state-of-the-art de-formable image registration methods. Our code is available at https://github.com/Torbjorn1997/IIRP-Net.