In order to quantify geometric distortions, a new quality measure, called standardized contour distance (SCD), is introduced. It uses the outer structure shape (OSS) information as basis for the evaluation.
The new registration method was evaluated with one monomodal phantom data set and two multimodal human brain data sets (BrainSuite trainings data, SPM Subject data). By comparing with recent and efficient techniques of the state of the art, in the monomodal case, the new approach achieves results comparable to the sum of squared differences as data term. In the multimodal cases, our new registration strategy improves the mean of the SCD from 0.96 ± 0.11 to 0.60 ± 0.13 in case of the SPM Subject data and from 0.92 ± 0.07 to 0.78 ± 0.11 in case of the BrainSuite trainings data.