# Recursive Uncertainty-Gated Image Registration for Learning-based Algorithms

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.28081 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.28081/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 21 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Deep Learning for Segmentation using an Open Large-Scale Dataset in 2D Echocardiography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06948/) (2019)
- [Large Deformation Diffeomorphic Image Registration with Laplacian Pyramid Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16148/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Learning for Fast Probabilistic Diffeomorphic Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04605/) (2018)
- [Recursive Cascaded Networks for Unsupervised Medical Image Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.12353/) (2019)
- [uniGradICON: A Foundation Model for Medical Image Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05780/) (2024)
- [A survey on deep learning in medical image registration: new technologies, uncertainty, evaluation metrics, and beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15615/) (2023)
- [Test-Time Training for Deformable Multi-Scale Image Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13578/) (2021)
- [Heteroscedastic Uncertainty Estimation Framework for Unsupervised Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00836/) (2023)
- [Recurrent Registration Neural Networks for Deformable Image Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.09988/) (2019)
- [Double-Uncertainty Guided Spatial and Temporal Consistency Regularization Weighting for Learning-based Abdominal Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02433/) (2021)
- [Meta-Registration: Learning Test-Time Optimization for Single-Pair Image Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10996/) (2022)
- [Uncertainty Estimation for Pretrained Medical Image Registration Models via Transformation Equivariance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23355/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Conventional image registration algorithms are robust to domain shifts and achieve low errors, but they are slow and computationally expensive. Deep-learning methods are efficient at inference-time, but face challenges in out-of-domain samples. We propose Recursive Uncertainty-Gated Image Registration (RUGI), an algorithm for iteratively refining deformation fields predicted by learning-based registration models. At each iteration, the registration model predicts an incremental deformation, and a gating map modulates the update. Refinements are hence concentrated in regions that remain difficult to register. We explore two gating strategies: a learned uncertainty-based approach and an image residual error approach. We evaluate RUGI on cardiac MRI and echocardiography datasets and show consistent improvements over single-step inference. Ablation experiments demonstrate that iterative refinement alone improves registration, but informative spatial gating provides a significant additional benefit. The error-gated variant of RUGI can also be applied directly to existing pretrained models; applied to VoxelMorph, TransMorph, and CycleMorph, it yields MSE reductions of 27-37% with no modification to the original training procedure. The improvements in registration performance are reflected in decreased errors in ejection fraction estimation relative to ground truths. These results demonstrate that spatially selective iterative refinement provides an effective strategy to improve registration accuracy at inference-time.