An ITK-based Implementation of the Stochastic Rank Correlation (SRC) Metric

Recently, Birkfellner et al. proposed a novel image-to-image merit function (stochastic rank correlation, SRC) for robust intensity-based 2D/3D image registration. In this work, we summarize the basic idea of SRC, and present a generic ITK-based implementation of this image-to-image metric including tests for software verification. Moreover, we provide two simple examples that demonstrate the usage of this metric: a) within the native ITK 2D/3D image registration method, and b) within a recently published extended ITK-based 2D/3D registration framework. It is, however, important to note, that this paper neither covers a comprehensive evaluation of SRC, nor a comparison with other metrics. It rather shows that SRC appears to succeed on a femoral and a porcine data set in the course of ITK-based 2D/3D image registration.