Correlation Of 3D Surfaces From Multiple Modalities In Medical Imaging
Arturo Gamboa-Aldeco, Linda L. Fellingham, George T.Y. Chen · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1986
Tomographic studies are used in a comparative and complementary fashion to show bone and soft tissue anatomy (CT, MR) and disease as well as physiological activity (PET, SPECT). The problem is to take several sets of imaging data, which are inherently tridimensional and correlate the information provided. The usual approach is for the physician to mentally correlate the information provided by a set of two dimensional images. Different scaling factors, orien-tation of the acquired images and patient positioning may difficult the accurate identification of the same regions of interest, specially for critical applications such as radiation therapy or surgery planning. In this paper we analyze a method to correlate sets of tomographic data based on geometrical transformations between corresponding surfaces defined in each imaging modality. The outlines of structures defined in one modality can then be viewed in the context of another or a common plane of view can be defined for the different structures for simultaneous viewing. Also 3-dimensional depictions of surfaces defined in various studies can be viewed in a composite image.