Authors:
Peter Faltin
1
;
Thomas Kraus
2
;
Marcin Kopaczka
1
and
Dorit Merhof
1
Affiliations:
1
RWTH Aachen University, Germany
;
2
Uniklinik RWTH Aachen, Germany
Keyword(s):
Surface Representation, Planar Visualization, Multidimensional Scaling, Flattening, Temporal Consistency.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Biomedical Visualization and Applications
;
Computer Vision, Visualization and Computer Graphics
;
Spatial Data Visualization
Abstract:
Malignant pleural mesothelioma is an aggressive tumor of the lung surrounding membrane. The standardized
workflow for the assessment comprises an inspection of 3D CT images to detect pleural thickenings which
act as indicators for this tumor. Up to now, the visualization of relevant information from the pleura has only
been superficially addressed. Current approaches still utilize a slice-wise visualization which does not allow
a global assessment of the lung surface. In this publication, we present an approach which enables a planar
2D visualization of the pleura by flattening its surface. A distortion free mapping to a planar representation
is generally not possible. The present method determines a planar representation with low distortions directly
from a voxel-based surface. For a meaningful follow-up assessment, the consistent representation of a lung
from different points in time is highly important. Therefore, the main focus in this publication is to guarantee
a consistent rep
resentation of the pleura from the same patient extracted from images taken at two different
points in time. This temporal consistency is achieved by our newly proposed link of both surfaces during the
flattening process. Additionally, a new initialization method which utilizes a flattened lung prototype speeds
up the flattening process.
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