DEVICE AND METHOD FOR ALIGNMENT OF MULTI-MODAL CLINICAL IMAGES USING JOINT SYNTHESIS, SEGMENTATION, AND REGISTRATION

An image processing method for performing image alignment includes: acquiring a moving image generated by a first imaging modality; acquiring a fixed image generated by a second imaging modality; jointly optimizing a generator model, a register model, and a segmentor model applied to the moving image and the fixed image according to a plurality of cost functions; and applying a spatial transformation corresponding to the optimized register model to the moving image to align the moving image to the fixed image; wherein: the generator model generates a synthesized image from the moving image conditioned on the fixed image; the register model estimates the spatial transformation to align the synthesized image to the fixed image; and the segmentor model estimates segmentation maps of the moving image, the fixed image, and the synthesized image.