Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 13.3
Pet-CT (hybrid scanner) and 3D viewers in OsiriX
Among the platforms, OsiriX is specifically designed for display and processing
of multi-modal radiological applications and is able to perform image fusion between
different imaging modalities (for example, PET-CT or PET-MRI). Visualization of
the images generated by the fusion process allows for the interpretation of multi-
scale information related to both anatomy and metabolism outside the actual hybrid
imaging devices (see Fig.
13.3
).
Being a DICOMcompliant software, OsiriX allows the host device to be identified
as a node on the DICOMnetworkwhich is the base for data query and communication
purposes: simple queries and active interaction with the selected DICOM servers are
allowed, based on standard metadata (e.g. the patient name, the acquisition date).
From the collaborative perspective, OsiriX can extract the metadata stored in the
header of DICOM files to sort images according to demographic, technical and
acquisition protocol. Images and corresponding data are stored in its local databases
and can be shared among different remote workstations that can even be located in
different departments or different hospitals to access selected patients' records. In
fact, it has been already adopted in many hospitals and radiology departments as
well as other clinical departments such as surgery and cardiology for medical image
analyses.
YaDiV (“Yet Another DIcom Viewer”) is a program for interactive visualization
of 3Dmedical volume data developed byWelfenlab. Its main goal is the visualization
of 3D data, but it is also designed to support the semi-automatic data segmentation
task: there are several segmentation algorithms which are popular in medical fields
already implemented, like Region Growing, Snake, Energy snake (see Fig.
13.4
).
