3-D visualization of biomedical CT images based on OpenGL and VRML techniques

Current high-performance computers and advanced image processing capabilities have made the application of three dimensional visualization objects in biomedical computer tomographic (CT) images facilitate the researches on biomedical engineering greatly. Trying to cooperate with the update technology using Internet, where 3-D data are typically stored and processed on powerful servers accessible by using TCP/IP, we should hold the results of the isosurface be applied in medical visualization generally. Furthermore, this project is a future part of PACS system our lab working on. So in this system we use the 3-D file format VRML2.0, which is used through the Web interface for manipulating 3-D models. In this program we implemented to generate and modify triangular isosurface meshes by marching cubes algorithm. Then we used OpenGL and MFC techniques to render the isosurface and manipulating voxel data. This software is more adequate visualization of volumetric data. The drawbacks are that 3-D image processing on personal computers is rather slow and the set of tools for 3-D visualization is limited. However, these limitations have not affected the applicability of this platform for all the tasks needed in elementary experiments in laboratory or data preprocessed.