# textttDisMorph: learning to disentangle technical distortions from true biological change

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.08173 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.08173/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Aug 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [VoxelMorph: A Learning Framework for Deformable Medical Image Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.05231/) (2018)
- [SynthSeg: Segmentation of brain MRI scans of any contrast and resolution without retraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.09559/) (2021)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Probabilistic Diffeomorphic Registration for Images and Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.03545/) (2019)
- [SynthMorph: learning contrast-invariant registration without acquired images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10282/) (2020)
- [SynthStrip: Skull-Stripping for Any Brain Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09974/) (2022)
- [uniGradICON: A Foundation Model for Medical Image Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05780/) (2024)
- [Anatomy-aware and acquisition-agnostic joint registration with SynthMorph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11329/) (2023)
- [Synthesizing Individualized Aging Brains in Health and Disease with Generative Models and Parallel Transport](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.21049/) (2025)
- [MultiMorph: On-demand Atlas Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.00247/) (2025)
- [Registration by Regression (RbR): a framework for interpretable and flexible atlas registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16781/) (2024)
- [VoxelPrompt: A Vision Agent for End-to-End Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08397/) (2024)
- [Domain-randomized deep learning for neuroimage analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13458/) (2025)
- [Learning accurate rigid registration for longitudinal brain MRI from synthetic data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13010/) (2025)
- [Disentangling Progress in Medical Image Registration: Beyond Trend-Driven Architectures towards Domain-Specific Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.01913/) (2025)
- [A deformation-based morphometry framework for disentangling Alzheimer's disease from normal aging using learned normal aging templates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.08176/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Longitudinal MRI enables sensitive measurement of structural brain change for studying aging and neurodegenerative disease. Deformable image registration is a key tool for estimating such change by computing a dense deformation that captures geometric differences between longitudinal scans. However, MRI scanners introduce geometric distortions that vary across acquisition systems and protocols, such as gradient non-linearity (GNL) distortion. Existing registration methods estimate a single field that conflates biological and technical effects, potentially biasing downstream morphometric measurements if distortions remain (partially) uncorrected. We propose textttDisMorph, a registration framework trained entirely on synthetic data that explicitly decomposes longitudinal deformation into technical and anatomical transforms. It predicts two dense deformations, each encoding one effect. During training, a novel generative model synthesizes both effects separately to provide disentanglement supervision, while domain randomization promotes generalization across imaging protocols. We evaluate our method in three complementary settings. On simulated data with known ground truth, our method detects anatomical change more accurately and consistently than conventional registration. On real image pairs that differ only by GNL distortion, our method assigns most geometric change to the distortion field, demonstrating specificity in the absence of anatomical change. On longitudinal Alzheimer's disease (AD) pairs, our method detects anatomical change in AD-related brain structures while identifying residual distortion left after standard correction. By disentangling MRI-induced distortion from biological change in the longitudinal deformation, our method paves the way for more accurate longitudinal morphometry in clinical settings where maintaining acquisition consistency is challenging.