Advanced Bone Visualization

This thesis presents a completely new visualization technique for bones with arbitrary elongated structure by CT data. As example the ribs and the vertebrae are used. The diagnosis of ribs by the radiologist is very difficult with current methods (MPR, Rib Unfolding). Therefore he must either slice through the CT slices to navigate, that he can analyze the ribs, or he uses a visualization software with unfolded ribs to inspect them. The problem of this method is that there is only a visualization of the planar cross-section and he need many interaction steps for the diagnosis. The method in this thesis involves two parts. At first, the bone will be segmented and separated in the cortical and spongy layer. The second part is an unwinding of each layer. By doing this the complete surface of the bone is visible in one projection. The radiologist has the ability to recognize rib fractures or metastasis by considering one visualization direct. By marking the suspicious region in the original data he can verify the diagnosis. The created slices can be summarized and combined with a projection method (maximum-intensityprojection, minimum-intensity-projection, average) to display deeper features of the ribs. This supports the different diagnosis types. After that the visualization algorithm was included in the Siemens Healthcare prototype, which served as user interface.