[vtkusers] about volume rendering in medicine.

[Luis Ibanez]

This is unfortunately true.
Radiologist only use slice images for diagnosis.

It is probably the consequence of two facts:

1) Radiologist do not get training on images generated
     by volume renderting.

2) There are no stablished standards on the sort of
    transfer functions and visualization parameters
    that should be used for diagnostic of a particular
    disorder in a specific image modality.


It also leads to the circular dependency problem that:
because radiologist only look at slices, imaging protocols
tend to acquire slices with high in-plane resolution and
large inter-slice spacing, making those images unusable
for computer assisted image processing. It is not uncommon
to find voxel sizes with anisotropies of 1:10. Most image
segmentation and registration algorithms will have a hard
time producing something useful out of such images.

Probably medical organizations such as RSNA should
make an effort for establishing standards for visualization
of 3D medical images, and provide training on how to take
advantages these modern visualization techniques on the
daily clinical practice.

Otherwise most of the techological advances of 3D imaging
will keep being wasted before it gets to benefit the health care
offered to patients.

Curiously,
it is more common to find surgeons using 3D rendering
images for image-guided surgery.



     Luis
    


.............

Antoine ROSSET wrote:

>>hi, vtk users,
>>
>>If there are some medical related guys here, it is possible for them to
>>answer my question. My question is more radiologist specific question. I
>>am doing volume rendering. I want to know what is the task of a radiologist
>>in general for analyzing CT slices. How do they do this analysis based on
>>2D CT slices?(where can I find this kind of information?) Is it possible for
>>volume rendering to detect all the structures of interest based on the slice
>>information?
>>    
>>
>
>For image interpretation, radiologists always look at the axial CT images,
>and sometimes use MPR images if slice thickness is less than 3mm. No
>radiologists would never give a diagnostic by simply looking at a 3D
>reconstruction like volume rendering, MIP, ... Volume rendering and MIP are
>'nice' images to show to clinicians, but they are not 'diagnostic' images.
>
>  
>