The KISMET Volume Visualization Page

Introduction

This page is intended to give you an impression of KISMET's capabilities on the field of fast and accurate Volume Visualization. We are offering some examples of our actual work here.

Application fields:

• simulation and training of surgical tasks (e.g. biopsies) with force-reflecting input devices
• planning of surgical instruments
• medical diagnostics
• navigational support and on-line surveillance during surgical tasks (in combination with fast spiral-CT or open MR tomographs)
• non-destructive material evaluation

Our actual hardware equipment:

• Silicon Graphics ONYX with Reality Engine II
• 2 MIPS R4400 200 MHz processors
• 128 MByte main memory
• 4 MByte texture memory

• Silicon Graphics MAXIMUM IMPACT
• 1 MIPS R4400 250 MHz processor
• 320 MByte main memory
• 4 MByte texture memory

Data acquisition:

• on-line (LAN, possibly direct bus-bus coupling)
• off-line (harddisk, magnetic tape)
• converting tools to directly transform series of single images (slices) to KISMET-format data.
• Supported input formats: DICOM 3 and TIFF.

Rendering speed:

• about 8-10 frames/second showing a 256 x 256 x 128 voxel data set in a 400 x 400 pixel wide window.

Possible data manipulations:

• 6 arbitrarily positionable clipping planes to "cut free" the region of interest
• pre- as well as user defined transfer functions for the interactive adjustment of rendering quality and display parameters
• simple threshold-segmentation

KISMET User Interface with opened Volume Visualization menus

User Interface (960x768 jpg, 124k)

Three examples of how the display can be influenced by changing the transfer functions. The three following images are all derived from the same CT data set.

CT head: surface reconstruction (766x613 jpg, 28k)

CT head: MIP (maximum intensity projection) (766x613 jpg, 18k)

CT head: bone reconstruction (766x613 jpg, 28k)

Once again the same data, but this time clipping is applied to present only the lower part of the jaw.

CT head: lower jaw bone structure (536x414 jpg, 56k)

MR data of head with a tumor in the pituitary gland region (big yellow object in the middle), using a colorized transfer function.

MR head: tumor in the pituitary gland region (755x605 jpg, 151k)

The data used in the following four images were taken from Research System's Visible Human CD, a collection of data provided by the National Library of Medecine's 'Visible Human Project'.
You can see the wide range of possible volume representations longing from MR- and CT greyvalue data to photographic true-color images.

MR examination of thorax with two double oblique clipping planes applied (639x511 jpg, 32k)

MR (proton density weighted) of head (639x511 jpg, 25k)

full color reconstruction, clipped twice (766x613 jpg, 45k)

just another part of the 'Visible Human' (766x613 jpg, 37k)

Synthetic MRI room (960x768 jpg, 46k)
Remote manipulator (766x613 jpg, 33k)

Biopsy model (766x613 jpg, 26k)

MR volume with biopsy needle (766x613 jpg, 23k)

The creation of new medical simulation applications has become possible by combining KISMET's inherent capabilities concerning CAD modelling, force feedback functionality and volume visualization.

This is an example of a biopsy scenario. In contrary to the previous examples, here the manipulating device is controlled by the user handling the PHANToM force reflecting input device. At the current state of development, the user gets a sensation of a certain material-dependent friction while penetrating the volume with the needle.

More about our force reflection developments can be found at the KISMET force reflection pages.

Biopsy scenario (jpg, 195k)

---

---

Scientific information and contact address:

Dr.-Ing. U. Kühnapfel

Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe GmbH

Institut für Angewandte Informatik

Postfach 3640

D-76021 Karlsruhe, FRG

E-mail : jet@iai.fzk.de

Voice : +49-(0)7247-82-2567

Fax : +49-(0)7247-82-5786

List of publications

Back to top

KISMET homepage