Medical visualization based on VRML technology and its application

Current high-performance computers and advanced image processing capabilities have made the application of three dimensional visualization objects in biomedical 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 held the results of the isosurface be applied in medical visualization generally. 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, using OpenGL and MFC techniques to render the isosurface and manipulate 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. With the help of OCT and MPE scanning image system, applying these techniques to the visualization of rabbit brain, constructing data sets of hierarchical subdivisions of the cerebral information, we can establish a virtual environment on the World Wide Web for the rabbit brain research from its gross anatomy to its tissue and cellular levels of detail, providing graphical modeling and information management of both the outer and the inner space of the rabbit brain.