[Suspected Spam]Re: [Insight-developers] OrientedImage and gradient calculations

Luis Ibanez luis.ibanez at kitware.com
Fri Mar 24 09:32:02 EST 2006


Hi Jim, Stephen,

I agree with you that we should revisit all the Gradient filters,
(and we should include any other classes computing derivatives)
to make sure that they are explicit in their usage of one of the
three coordinate systems:


      1) Index coordinate system
         [Integers/Floats will be the same for the
          purpose of computing derivatives]

      2) Physical coordinate system

      3) Local (or any other name we agree upon) coordinate system



Stephen raised the concern that the image is starting to make
a significant amount of processing. We could put this computation
in a helper class (something that is already used in the Oriented
Image for taking advantage of the template meta-programming).


The advantage of doing this in a helper class is that we can put in
the Review directory and try it for a while, without compromising
the API of the itkImage.


I would suggest names such as:


         a) itkImageCoordinateFrameCalculator
         b) itkImageCoordinateFrameConverter
         c) itkCoordinateFrameImageHelper


This class probably would have to be made a "friend"
of the Image class in order to access private data
from it.

--

It seems that we should review about

      1 file in Code/Common (SobelOperator)
     29 filters (54 files) in Code/BasicFilters
     43 classes in Code/Algorithms



     Luis




===========================================
Miller, James V (GE, Research) wrote:
> Luis, 
> 
> You bring up a point that I did not include in the original message, namely
> by having the following methods, 
> 
>    A) TransformIndexGradientToPhysicalGradient()
>    B) TransformLocalGradientToPhysicalGradient()
> 
> we now have named the following coordinate systems:
> 
>    1) Index coordinate frame.  Integral I, J, K frame.
>    2) ContinuousIndex coordinate frame.  Same as the Index coordinate frame
>        but with floating point precision.
>    3) Physical coordinate frame.  A world coordinate frame that
>        accounts for pixel spacing and orientation.
>    4) Local coordinate frame.  A pseudo-world coordinate frame that
>        accounts for pixel spacing but not orientation.
> 
> The term "Local" in this context would be new to ITK. We should make sure
> that this is the name we want to associate with this coordinate
> frame.
> 
> We should probably revisit our gradient calculation filters and either:
> 
>    i) Document that they only calculate the gradient wrt the local coordinate
>         frame
>   ii) Modify the filters so that they can produce gradients in any coordinate
>         frame (Index, Local, or Physical).
> 
> 
> There are other places in the toolkit where gradients are calculated in place
> (without using a filter). For instance, in some of the level sets and optical
> flow based registration.  We'll need to determine whether these gradients
> are being calculated in the right space.  Right now, "most" places are 
> calculating the gradient in the Local coordinate frame.  Before we added
> orientation, these filters "thought" they were calculating the gradient
> in the Physical coordinate frame.  For the level sets and anisotropic 
> diffusion, the gradients should probably in the Local coordinate frame.
> For the optical flow based registration (demons, levelset motion, etc)
> and perhaps in the FEM registration, these gradients should probably in the 
> the Physical coordinate frame.
> 
> The more I keep writing "Local coordinate frame" the more I like the term.
> Though I am still a bit concerned as to whether someone new to ITK would
> recognize this frame as taking into account spacing or not.
> 
> Jim
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Luis Ibanez [mailto:luis.ibanez at kitware.com]
> Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2006 6:14 PM
> To: Miller, James V (GE, Research)
> Cc: Peter Cech; Insight-developers (E-mail); Blezek, Daniel J (GE,
> Research)
> Subject: [Suspected Spam]Re: [Insight-developers] OrientedImage and
> gradient calculations
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Jim,
> 
> 
> Adding a TransformIndexGradientToPhysicalGradient() to the itk::Image
> sounds like a good idea. It sounds better than correcting inside
> the filters because Gradient operations can be useful in the local
> coordinate system for the purpose of performing operations such as
> segmentation and feature detection.
> 
> 
> The Image gradient that is computed by the Image Metrics is
> produced by the GradientRecursiveGaussianImageFilter. This
> filter already takes into account the image spacing. So the
> proposed Image method
> 
>        TransformIndexGradientToPhysicalGradient()
> 
> doesn't need to apply any spacing correction... However, other gradient
> filters may not be taking the spacing into account (something to double
> check...).
> 
> 
> As Jim pointed out, this problem will apply to all other filters
> that compute gradients in the image, or higher order derivatives.
> 
> 
> In the most generic case we should use a Metric Tensor for mapping
> the derivatives from one space into the other. The reason why the
> Tensor notation may be more appropriate is that for higher order
> derivatives the Tensor has to be applied multiple times.
> 
> Derivatives are covariant tensors, therefore a Gradient, is a
> Tensor of covariant rank one, while a Hessian is a Tensor of
> covariant rank two.
> 
> The MetricTensor that maps the image space into the world
> coordinates space can be obtained as the inverse of the matrix
> used in the itkImageTransformHelper.
> 
> In the particular case of the GradientRecursiveGaussianImageFilter,
> we only need the correction of the orientation, so the matrix
> that will be useful is the m_Direction matrix instead of the
> m_IndexToPhysicalPoint matrix which also contains the scaling
> corrections for pixel spacing.
> 
> One way of avoiding the ambiguity and potential bugs of use,
> is to provide two new methods along the lines of what Jim
> suggested:
> 
>    A) TransformIndexGradientToPhysicalGradient()
>    B) TransformLocalGradientToPhysicalGradient()
> 
> The first one will use a matrix that involves both rotation
> and pixel spacing, while the second use a matrix that involves
> only rotations. We probably want to add also the inverse methods:
> 
>    C) TransformPhysicalGradientToIndexGradient()
>    D) TransformPhysicalGradientToLocalGradient()
> 
> and eventually:
> 
>    E) TransformLocalGradientToIndexGradient()
>    F) TransformIndexGradientToLocalGradient()
> 
> although for these four methods we could wait until we see
> a real need for them...
> 
> 
> 
> I would suggest to add only the two methods (A) and (B)
> as Jim proposed.
> 
> 
> 
>     Luis
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks Dan for
> 
> 
> 
>         "using your deductive powers to
>          figure out an extremely vexing ITK bug".
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ==================
> Peter Cech wrote:
> 
>>On Fri, Mar 17, 2006 at 09:49:17 -0500, Miller, James V (GE, Research) wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Dan Blezek stumbled across the following problem:
>>>
>>>In the registration framework, the metrics use the image gradient in the calculation of the derivative of the metric wrt to the parameters of the transformation.  The image gradients are calculated taking into account the image spacing to provide a gradient in physical space.
>>>
>>>When an OrientedImage is used, these gradient calculations are not truly in physical space since gradients are not reoriented into the physical coordinate frame.  This affects the registration because the mapping of positions does take into account orientation but the image gradients, and hence the derivative of the metric wrt the parameters, does not.  In Dan's test case, when the derivative of the metric should force the transformation to move the image up, it ends up moving the image down.
>>>
>>>One solution would be to add methods to image like:
>>>
>>> template<class TCoordRep>
>>> void TransformIndexGradientToPhysicalGradient(
>>>                     const IndexType & index,
>>>                     CovariantVector<TCoordRep, VImageDimension>& gradient) const
>>>
>>>which would convert a gradient computed in index space (without taking into account spacing or orientation) to a gradient computed in physical space.
>>>
>>>In Image, this method would merely apply the spacing scale factors.  In OrientedImage, this method would apply the spacing scale factors and the orientation matrix.  Anywhere gradients are calculated, we would have to make an extra function call to convert the gradients into physical space.
>>>
>>>We may also need methods for transforming higher order derivatives (and cross-derivatives).
>>
>>
>>Definitely. I just realized, that I recently witnessed the behavior when
>>displaying eigenvectors of hessian. I thought it was off because the
>>scale did not fit well for the structure...
>>
>>
>>
>>>Alternatively, wherever gradients are calculated, we could check whether we are operating on an Image or an OrientedImage and reorient the gradients as necessary there.
>>
>>
>>If we stay consistent with current Index to Point behavior (1) of Image,
>>a simple pass-through implementation will do.
>>
>>(1) It assumes origin is in the same orientation as the Image.
>>
>>Regards,
>>Peter
>>_______________________________________________
>>Insight-developers mailing list
>>Insight-developers at itk.org
>>http://www.itk.org/mailman/listinfo/insight-developers
>>
>>
> 
> 
> 
> 



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