X-ray video fluoroscopy along with two-dimensional-three-dimensional (2D-3D) registration techniques is widely used to study joints in vivo kinematic behaviors. These techniques, however, are generally very sensitive to the initial alignment of the 3-D model. We present an automatic initialization method for 2D-3D registration of medical images. The contour of the knee bone or implant was first automatically extracted from a 2-D x-ray image. Shape descriptors were calculated by normalized elliptical Fourier descriptors to represent the contour shape. The optimal pose was then determined by a hybrid classifier combining [Formula: see text]-nearest neighbors and support vector machine. The feasibility of the method was first validated on computer synthesized images, with 100% successful estimation for the femur and tibia implants, 92% for the femur and 95% for the tibia. The method was further validated on fluoroscopic x-ray images with all the poses of the testing cases successfully estimated. Finally, the method was evaluated as an initialization of a feature-based 2D-3D registration. The initialized and uninitialized registrations had success rates of 100% and 50%, respectively. The proposed method can be easily utilized for 2D-3D image registration on various medical objects and imaging modalities.
Keywords: 2D-3D registration; computed tomography image; kinematics; pose estimation; support vector machine; x-ray fluoroscopic image.