Interactive virtual probing of 4D MRI blood-flow.
Better understanding of hemodynamics conceivably leads to improved diagnosis and prognosis of cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, an elaborate analysis of the blood-flow in heart and thoracic arteries is essential. Contemporary MRI techniques enable acquisition of quantitative time-resolved flow information, resulting in 4D velocity fields that capture the blood-flow behavior. Visual exploration of these fields provides comprehensive insight into the unsteady blood-flow behavior, and precedes a quantitative analysis of additional blood-flow parameters. The complete inspection requires accurate segmentation of anatomical structures, encompassing a time-consuming and hard-to-automate process, especially for malformed morphologies. We present a way to avoid the laborious segmentation process in case of qualitative inspection, by introducing an interactive virtual probe. This probe is positioned semi-automatically within the blood-flow field, and serves as a navigational object for visual exploration. The difficult task of determining position and orientation along the view-direction is automated by a fitting approach, aligning the probe with the orientations of the velocity field. The aligned probe provides an interactive seeding basis for various flow visualization approaches. We demonstrate illustration-inspired particles, integral lines and integral surfaces, conveying distinct characteristics of the unsteady blood-flow. Lastly, we present the results of an evaluation with domain experts, valuing the practical use of our probe and flow visualization techniques.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, within the group of Biomedical Image Analysis, Eindhoven University of Technology. r.f.p.v.pelt@tue.nl
Roy
R
van Pelt
Javier Oliván
JO
Bescós
Marcel
M
Breeuwer
Rachel E
RE
Clough
M Eduard
ME
Gröller
Bart ter Haar
Bt
Romenij
Anna
A
Vilanova
D001783:Blood Flow Velocity; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology; D003196:Computer Graphics; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006439:Hemodynamics; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D018810:Magnetic Resonance Angiography / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014584:User-Computer Interface