B-LUT: Fast and low memory B-spline image interpolation

We propose a fast alternative to B-splines in image processing based on an approximate calculation using precomputed B-spline weights. During B-spline indirect transformation, these weights are efficiently retrieved in a nearest-neighbor fashion from a look-up table, greatly reducing overall computation time. Depending on the application, calculating a B-spline using a look-up table, called B-LUT, will result in an exact or approximate B-spline calculation. In case of the latter the obtained accuracy can be controlled by the user. The method is applicable to a wide range of B-spline applications and has very low memory requirements compared to other proposed accelerations. The performance of the proposed B-LUTs was compared to conventional B-splines as implemented in the popular ITK toolkit for the general case of image intensity interpolation. Experiments illustrated that highly accurate B-spline approximation can be obtained all while computation time is reduced with a factor of 5–6. The B-LUT source code, compatible with the ITK toolkit, has been made freely available to the community.