Automatic transfer function design for medical visualization using visibility distributions and projective color mapping.
Transfer functions play a key role in volume rendering of medical data, but transfer function manipulation is unintuitive and can be time-consuming; achieving an optimal visualization of patient anatomy or pathology is difficult. To overcome this problem, we present a system for automatic transfer function design based on visibility distribution and projective color mapping. Instead of assigning opacity directly based on voxel intensity and gradient magnitude, the opacity transfer function is automatically derived by matching the observed visibility distribution to a target visibility distribution. An automatic color assignment scheme based on projective mapping is proposed to assign colors that allow for the visual discrimination of different structures, while also reflecting the degree of similarity between them. When our method was tested on several medical volumetric datasets, the key structures within the volume were clearly visualized with minimal user intervention.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore. Electronic address: Lile.Cai@nus.edu.sg.
Lile
L
Cai
Wei-Liang
WL
Tay
Binh P
BP
Nguyen
Chee-Kong
CK
Chui
Sim-Heng
SH
Ong
D000465:Algorithms; D003116:Color; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
Color mapping; Transfer function design; Visibility distribution; Volume visualization