Brain scan algorithm is 1,000 times faster

MIT has published details of "VoxelMorph", a new machine-learning algorithm, which is over 1,000 times faster at registering brain scans and other 3-D images. Medical image registration is a common technique that involves overlaying two images – such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans – to compare and analyse anatomical differences in great detail. If a patient has a brain tumour, for instance, doctors can overlap a brain scan from several months ago onto a more recent scan to analyse small changes in the tumour's progress. Unfortunately, this process can often take hours, as traditional systems meticulously align each of potentially a million pixels in the combined scans. In a pair of upcoming conference papers, however, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) describe how to overcome this problem.