Applications
Image registration has applications in remote sensing (cartography updating), and computer vision. Due to the vast applications to which image registration can be applied, it is impossible to develop a general method that is optimized for all uses.
Medical image registration (for data of the same patient taken at different points in time such as change detection or tumor monitoring) often additionally involves elastic (also known as nonrigid) registration to cope with deformation of the subject (due to breathing, anatomical changes, and so forth). Nonrigid registration of medical images can also be used to register a patient's data to an anatomical atlas, such as the Talairach atlas for neuroimaging.
It is also used in astrophotography to align images taken of space. Using control points (automatically or manually entered), the computer performs transformations on one image to make major features align with a second image.
Image registration is essential part of panoramic image creation. There are many different techniques that can be implemented in real time and run on embedded devices like cameras and camera-phones.
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