PROJECT TITLE :

Accurate Interactive Visualization of Large Deformations and Variability in Biomedical Image Ensembles

ABSTRACT:

Large image deformations pose a challenging downside for the visualization and statistical analysis of 3D image ensembles that have a mess of applications in biology and medicine. Easy linear interpolation in the tangent space of the ensemble introduces artifactual anatomical structures that hamper the appliance of targeted visual shape analysis techniques. During this work we have a tendency to create use of the theory of stationary velocity fields to facilitate interactive non-linear image interpolation and plausible extrapolation for top quality rendering of large deformations and devise an efficient image warping method on the GPU. This will not only improve quality of existing visualization techniques, but opens up a field of novel interactive ways for shape ensemble analysis. Taking advantage of the efficient non-linear 3D image warping, we showcase four visualizations: one) browsing on-the-fly computed cluster mean shapes to find out about shape differences between specific categories, a pair of) interactive reformation to research complicated morphologies in a single read, 3) likelihood volumes to gain a concise overview of variability and 4) streamline visualization to point out variation very well, specifically uncovering its component tangential to a reference surface. Analysis on a true world dataset shows that the presented method outperforms the state-of-the-art in terms of visual quality while retaining interactive frame rates. A case study with a website professional was performed in that the novel analysis and visualization methods are applied on normal model structures, particularly skull and mandible of various rodents, to investigate and compare influence of phylogeny, diet and geography on form. The visualizations enable for example to tell apart (population-)traditional and pathological morphology, assist in uncovering correlation to extrinsic factors and doubtless support assessment of model quality.