Large deformation diffeomorphic metric mapping

A diffeomorphic mapping system is a system designed to map, manipulate, and transfer information which is stored in many types of spatially distributed medical imagery.

Diffeomorphic mapping is the underlying technology for mapping and analyzing information measured in human anatomical coordinate systems which have been measured via Medical imaging. Diffeomorphic mapping is a broad term that actually refers to a number of different algorithms, processes, and methods. It is attached to many operations and has many applications for analysis and visualization. Diffeomorphic mapping can be used to relate various sources of information which are indexed as a function of spatial postiion as the key index variable. Diffeomorphisms are by their latin root structure preserving transformations, which are in turn differentiable and therefore smooth, allowing for the calculation of metric based quantities such as arc length and surface areas. Spatial location and extents in human anatomical coordinate systems can be recorded via a variety of Medical imaging modalities, generally termed multi-modal medical imagery, providing either scalar and or vector quantities at each spatial location. Examples are scalar T1 or T2 Magnetic resonance imagery, or as 3x3 diffusion tensor matrices Diffusion MRI and Diffusion-weighted imaging, to scalar densities associated to Computed Tomography (CT),or functional imagery such as temporal data of functional magnetic resonance imaging and scalar densities such as Positron emission tomography (PET).