Medicus-system for medical data visualization

Summary form only given, substantially as follows. The program Medicus was designed for the visualization of medical data captured by standard scanners like CT, MR and confocal microscopes. It operates in the UNIX environment supported by workstation hardware. The program enhances the perception of the relevant spatial information on the investigated tissue by a physician. The input data are series of pictures (a stack) of planar cross-sections, which are perfectly registered. The system presents the data in both planar and volume modes. The planar mode presentation comprises single-planar, multi-planar and orthogonal projections. The investigated objects can be rendered, and thus the perception and understanding of their mutual spatial relations are significantly enhanced. The rendering is accomplished by implementation of various suitable procedures, e.g. maximum intensity projection, Z-buffer shading, gray level, gradient shading, etc. Among the advantages of the developed visualization software system Medicus, its interactive control (e.g. lumination, rendering parameters, cut planes, etc.) should be mentioned. Various attributes can be assigned to the chosen (segmented) objects, like color, transparency and group. Arbitrary choice of cut planes and display of the resulting peeling are standard options of the system. Interactive manipulation with the rendered object (e.g. shifts, rotation and zooming) are also among the standard features of Medicus. The program has already been tested using various types of medical data, and it has proved to function satisfactorily.