Volumetric Image Alignment Utilizing Particle Swarm Optimization

In some cases an object can not be completely imaged with a single image. These cases call for taking multiple images and stitching the images together to form a complete view of the object. The images that are dealt with are taken with a confocal laser-scanning microscope. This produces a stack of two-dimensional images that represent the volume in the microscope’s field of view. While the microscope automatically creates a z stack, the positioning of the tiles in x and y is done manually. Therefore, the slices within each stack are assumed to be already aligned. Our technique will take multiple stacks of images and stitch them together to form a single volume. We will use a particle swarm optimization technique to calculate the proper transformations required to produce the final volume.