3D Visualization of Intracranial Aneurysms with Multidimensional Transfer Functions

Abstract

Clear identification of vascular structures is of vital importance for the planning of surgical treatment of intracranial aneurysms. A valuable tool for performing this task is direct volume visualization of CT-angiography (CTA) data making use of transfer functions based on the measured intensity values. In this work, we introduce direct 3D visualization of intracranial aneurysms with transfer functions based on multiple features extracted from the CTA dataset. We have provided a framework for the creation of multidimensional transfer functions which has been adjusted to the needs of clinical environments. Results were evaluated with a set of 10 clinical cases from our archive and have shown a substantial improvement when compared with the standard 3D visualization approach. Clear separation of bones and vessels was achieved even for cases were the target structures were embedded in the skull base. No pre-processing of the data, such as explicit segmentation was applied. All tests were performed on standard PCs equipped with modern 3D graphics cards.