title: Real-time illustration of vascular structures.
abstract: We present real-time vascular visualization methods, which extend on illustrative rendering techniques to particularly accentuate spatial depth and to improve the perceptive separation of important vascular properties such as branching level and supply area. The resulting visualization can and has already been used for direct projection on a patient's organ in the operation theater where the varying absorption and reflection characteristics of the surface limit the use of color. The important contributions of our work are a GPU-based hatching algorithm for complex tubular structures that emphasizes shape and depth as well as GPU-accelerated shadow-like depth indicators, which enable reliable comparisons of depth distances in a static monoscopic 3D visualization. In addition, we verify the expressiveness of our illustration methods in a large, quantitative study with 160 subjects.
authors.affiliation: MeVis GmbH. ritter@mevis.de
authors.forename: Felix
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ritter
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hansen
authors.forename: Volker
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Dicken
authors.forename: Olaf
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Konrad
authors.forename: Bernhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Preim
authors.forename: Heinz-Otto
authors.initials: HO
authors.lastname: Peitgen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D001921:Brain / Q000098:blood supply*; D003196:Computer Graphics; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003199:Computer Systems; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D008488:Medical Illustration; D008833:Microcirculation / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D008953:Models, Anatomic; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods; D014584:User-Computer Interface