3-D visualization of blood vessels and tumor using thin slice CT images
Tetsuya Tozaki, Yoshiki Kawata, Noboru Niki, Hironobu Ohmatsu, Noriyuki Moriyama · 2002
The lung area has very complicated structure, so it is difficult to understand the connection between tumor and blood vessels or bronchus. The authors describe a 3-D visualization method to understand the 3-D connection between bronchus, blood vessels and tumor in the lung area. The authors extract 3-D images of bronchus and blood vessels from thin slice CT images of the lung area. Then they use a 3-D thinning algorithm, and they extract the centerline structure of the blood vessels image, which is based for the classification process of the blood vessels. The authors also analyze a centerline structure of the blood vessels image for classification of two blood vessels. Finally, the authors visualize the 3-D bronchus, and classify blood vessels and tumor using volume rendering. These algorithms are applied to a patient's thin slice CT images, and the effectiveness of this method is shown.>