Although existing 3D displays of CT and MR data aid in visualizing multiple slices of data, commercial systems lack the ability to illustrate changes in the solid displays due to proposed surgical procedures. Such realistic preoperative planning and the design of custom implants would decrease time in surgery, and thus reduce the cost and medical risk to the patient. The CEMAX-1000, a medical imaging console which generates 3D shaded surface displays from directed contours, features the ability to edit these contours to illustrate changes in soft tissue or bone images. A 2D slice edit facilitates modifications in the surface of the displayed object by allowing the surgeon to alter the shape of existing contours or to specify new contours. Working with the 3D display the surgeon defines new objects as subsets of the original and then manipulates the objects to show effects of relative movement proposed in surgery. This 3D edit capability operates interactively on the solid image, after which a new set of contours can be computed and stored in the object oriented data base. The editing capabilities of the CEMAX-1000, features of the data organization relevant to editing, and clinical applications of these features will be presented in this paper.

Date Published: 12 June 1986
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 0626, Application of Optical Instrumentation in Medicine XIV and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems, (12 June 1986); doi: 10.1117/12.975432

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0626:
Application of Optical Instrumentation in Medicine XIV and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems
Samuel J. Dwyer III; Roger H. Schneider, Editor(s)