Due to the limitation of medical image registration introduced by one kind of feature

a medical image elastic registration method using contour and feature points is proposed. Feature points can be extracted with semi automatic method

which can not only ensure the accuracy of the extraction but also avoid the complicated process of building corresponding relationship of feature points. On the basis of keeping shape of the contour

contour linearization is employed to reduce key points in the extracted contour

which improves the computation efficiency. The sum of the distances between feature points and the distances between contours is chosen as the criterion of image registration. The registration transformation is resolved iteratively by the frame of ICP algorithm. The analysis of the choice of cost function and the experimental comparison with other methods using real images demonstrate that the results of the proposed algorithm are better than those of other methods that only use the point or the contour. The presented method can not only register the structure of images (contour) but also align the interested anatomic positions (feature points)

which represents the exact difference between images

and is a fast and accurate medical image registration algorithm.