Adaptive optics retinal image registration from scale-invariant feature transform

With the use of adaptive optics(AO), high-resolution microscopic imaging of the living human retina in the single cell level has been achieved. In an AO retinal imaging system, with a small field size (about 1°, 300 μm) the motion of the eye severely affects the stabilization of the real-time video images results in significant distortions of the retina images. Scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) algorithm is applied to automatically abstract corner points with subpixel resolution and match the points in two frames. With the matched corner points, we estimate and remove the motions of 20 frames of photoreceptor cells and capillary blood vessels, respectively. The maximal translational motion is about 30 and 44 pixels in the 20 frames whose size is 416 × 416 pixels. More general motions can be considered by the SIFT algorithm, but only simple translational motion can be considered by cross-correlation algorithm.