Volumetric Clipping Surface: Un-occluded Visualization of Structures Preserving Depth Cues into Surrounding Organs

Abstract

Anatomies of interest are often hidden within data. In this paper, we address the limitations of visualizing them with a novel dynamic non-planar clipping of volumetric data, while preserving depth cues at adjacent structures to provide a visually consistent anatomical context, with no-user interaction. An un-occluded and un-modified display of the anatomies of interest is made possible. Given a semantic segmentation of the data, our technique computes a continuous clipping surface through the depth buffer of the structures of interest and extrapolates this depth onto surrounding contextual regions in real-time. We illustrate the benefit of this technique using Monte Carlo Ray Tracing (MCRT), in the visualization of deep seated anatomies with complex geometry across two modalities: (a) Knee Cartilage from MRI and (b) bones of the feet in CT. Our novel technique furthers the state of the art by enabling turnkey immediate appreciation of the pathologies in these structures with an unmodified rendering, while still providing a consistent anatomical context. We envisage our technique changing the way clinical applications present 3D data, by incorporating organ viewing presets, similar to transfer function presets for volume visualization.