Towards automatic detection and visualization of tissues in medical volume rendering

Abstract: The technique of volume rendering can be a powerful tool when visualizing 3D medical data sets. Its characteristic of capturing 3D internal structures within a 2D rendered image makes it attractive in the analysis. However, the applications that implement this technique fail to reach out to most of the supposed end-users at the clinics and radiology departments of today. This is primarily due to problems centered on the design of the Transfer Function (TF), the tool that makes tissues visually appear in the rendered image. The interaction with the TF is too complex for a supposed end-user and its capability of separating tissues is often insufficient. This thesis presents methods for detecting the regions in the image volume where tissues are contained. The tissues that are of interest can furthermore be identified among these regions. This processing and classification is possible thanks to the use of a priori knowledge, i.e. what is known about the data set and its domain in advance. The identified regions can finally be visualized using tissue adapted TFs that can create cleaner renderings of tissues where a normal TF would fail to separate them. In addition an intuitive user control is presented that allows the user to easily interact with the detection and the visualization.