GPU-accelerated parallel Gene-pool Optimal Mixing applied to multi-objective Deformable Image Registration

The Real-Valued Gene-pool Optimal Mixing Evolutionary Algorithm (RV-GOMEA) has previously been successfully used to achieve highly scalable optimization of various real-world problems in a gray-box optimization setting. Deformable Image Registration (DIR) is a multi-objective problem, aimed at finding the most likely non-rigid deformation of a given source image so that it matches a given target image. We specifically consider the case where the deformation model allows for finite-element-type modeling of tissue properties. This optimization problem is non-smooth, necessitating techniques like EAs to get good results. Though the objectives of DIR are non-separable, non-neighboring regions of the deformation grid are conditionally independent. We show that GOMEA allows to exploit such knowledge through the large-scale parallel application of variation steps, where each is only accepted when leading to an improvement, on a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). On various 2-dimensional DIR problems, we find that this way, similar results can be achieved as when sequential processing is performed, while allowing for substantial speed-ups (up to a factor of 111) for the highest-dimensional problems (i.e., the highest deformation-grid resolution). This work opens the door to the extension of this type of DIR to larger (3-dimensional) deformation grids, and its application to other real-world problems.

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