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3D Volume Rendering The Cedara Volume Explorer™ is a real-time, 3D rendering and visualization software engine specifically designed for ultrasound. It can be embedded in any Microsoft® Windows® environment at the ultrasound console, review station, or acquisition device.
Key Benefits
- Reconstructs DICOM cine from any ultrasound machine
- Ultrasound 3D reconstruction anywhere on a DICOM 3.0 network
- Retrieves 3D volumes from any DICOM machine
Hardware/OS Support
- Will execute at interactive speeds on any Pentium-class PC running MS-Windows (95/98/NT/2000/Me).
- RAM size requirements are minimal beyond what is needed to hold the input data.
- Multi-threaded rendering engine provides a near-linear performance improvement on dual or 4-way multi-processor computers.
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A shaded volume rendered image of a 12-week old fetus acquired by tracked free-hand 2D ultrasound (irregular slice positions). Note that the volume of interest (fetus) can be colored separately from the surrounding tissues. |
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Data Input and Output
- Rectilinear volumes of arbitrary dimensions
- Raw voxels
- Mitsubishi vox format
- Non-cubic voxels dimensions with trilinear interpolation during rendering (for minimal memory usage and maximum performance)
- Sequences of irregularly positioned slices
(tracked or un tracked)
- Reconstructed into a volume (tri-linear interpolation) during load, or prereconstructed and loaded as a rectilinear volume
- Unique reconstruction algorithm produces exceptionally good quality (no holes or duplicates) at an exceptional speed (near real-time)
- Can optionally clip out undesirable information on the input images, to eliminate overlay pixels in video-grabbed images, remove hidden structures and speed up processing
- DICOM single frame and multi-frame files
- An integration sdk, that includes activation and data loading, allows to easily and
efficiently incorporating VE into existing products. Data can be loaded in VE through a flexible shared memory interface
- Real-time 4D: highly optimized volume reconstruction and rendering of data acquired by 2-D ultrasound transducers in fan-stack or vector-pyramid formats.
- Packaged data format for Internet download, containing preset views, volumes of interest, colors, and persistent settings. Export of AVI animation files and JPEG picture files.
- Integrated HTML report with embedded AVI and JPEG files and text comments. Optionally the reduced volume data set is embedded in HTML report allowing user to launch VE and interrogate volume directly from HTML report.
- Optionally wavelet compressed to a user-controlled degree (using a custom-developed 3-D wavelet codec). Incremental background decompression during load maximizes interactivity.
- 4-D data: a sequence of volumes of any format to be optionally cycled during rendering and manipulation
- 4-D cardiac visualization: variable speed looped playback of gated acquisition with full 3-D manipulation capability
- Work list support:
- Navigate back and forth between datasets as in Internet browser
- Load an arbitrary number of data sets at once, then sequence through
Visual Data Browser
- Auto-detected or user-selected studies folder
- Fast visual scroll through studies list
- Visual study overview and data selection showing 2D and 3D thumbnail icons for each series
- Fast visual scroll through series in a study
- Fast manual or automatic (cine) scroll through images in a series
- Real-time zoom/pan (bi-linear) and window width/level adjustment
- Image filters: rank (median), smoothing, sharpening or combination
- Can select multiple series to be explored in sequence (history list) or concurrently (4-D exploration)
3-D Rendering
- Four cross-correlated viewports updated simultaneously or a single large 3D image.
- Multi-planar reformats (MPR) at arbitrary location and orientation
- Volume rendering in multiple modes:
- Shaded 3D, voxel accumulation along the viewing ray based on opacity weighting and lighting simulation ( available with and without Depth Fading)
- Brightest, classical Maximum Intensity Projection where the brightest voxel along the viewing ray is visualized)
- Attenuated MIP, a variation of MIP where Depth Fading is also
considered
- X-ray, average of the voxels along the viewing ray
- 3D planes (with variable color-coding and transparency effects), a 3D visualization of the 3 reformat planes
- Toggle Ortho/Perspective view in all modes with arbitrary camera position and viewing angle
- Real-time control over opacity assignment (ramp start/stop, ramp shape), with color feedback on reformat viewports
- Zoom volume in 3D (super/under sample)
- Real-time control over contrast brightness
and color
- A unique inside-outside mode allows independent clipping and coloring of an arbitrarily shaped internal volumetric region (VOI)
- “Identify Location” mode allows user to correlate any visible point in a shaded 3-D viewport with its corresponding location on the MPR viewports
Segmentation and clipping
- Front cut plane at an arbitrary depth
- Organically-shaped “Bubble” clipper at an arbitrary orientation and size, with interactive size and position control, cross-correlated across viewports
- Volume of interest (VOI) rendering mask of arbitrary shape
- VOI created from bubble, or from a contour drawn on a any reformat image and inflated in the 3rd dimension using an original “ballooning” algorithm
- Add/subtract from VOI by drawing an arbitrary contour correction at any orientation
in space
- Intersection between VOI and reformats
overlaid on the reformat views
- Arbitrary length of “undo” and “redo” operations
- Rendering engine highly optimized to improve performance with clipping
3-D Fusion
- Two volumes can be fused for combined rendering
- Minimal impact on performance compared to a single volume rendering
- Separate adjustment of color and opacity for each volume with real-time feedback
- Separate clipping controls for each volume
4-D Rendering
- Sequences an arbitrary set of volumes at an adjustable rate
- Full control over 3D rendering while sequencing (as if it was a single volume)
- Control over phase sequencing speed and pattern (bounce/loop)
Real Time 3D
- Capable of real time volume rendering display of >20 volumes per second
- Supports rapid feed of new image data to reconstruct and render volumes in real-time (over 20 fan-stacks/sec at 128 cubed on 1 GHz Pentium)
- Memory efficient (bare minimum consumed)
Measurement (tracked only)
- VOI Volume in ml or voxels automatically shown
- True 3-D line distance and angle measurements
Saved Views
- A view (combined state of all viewports) can be persistently saved at any time and returned to later for continued interaction
- Visual views browser allows quick and easy selection of view to restore
- VOI is saved with views in which it was applied using highly compressed data structures (100-200KB typical)
- Add, replace and delete saved views
Color
- Full control over color, including highlights, mid-range, shadows and background
- Real-time feedback during color modification
- 12 preset color schemes, with capacity for the user to edit and save each.
- Auto-brightness algorithm adjusts viewing parameters to fit data and rendering algorithm selected
Perspective
- Define a viewing path by automatic interpolation of all rendering controls between
key frames to produce smooth transitions and camera movements
- Produce an arbitrary length video clip from the viewing path
- Control over number of in-between frames and replay update rate
- Compress the video into an AVI file that can easily be distributed
- Integrated AVI clip review
- Camera icon allows user to manipulate view and move along viewing path
Print
- Leverages the full Windows print functionality to print to any printer connected to the PC
- Support for many layouts and image sizes
- Immediate preview of layout before printing
Save and Copy
- 3D images compresses into small JPEG files during saving using high-quality
compression
- Copy to other applications (e.g., photo editors) through the Windows clipboard
- Compress any sequence of volume movements to an AVI file for export
HTML Integration for Reporting
- Create HTML report with text comments, drag and drop any image (as JPEG image), any volume (as wavelet compressed) or sequence of movements (as AVI file) into the HTML report.
- Report can be viewed in an web browser
- Reduced volume data set can be embedded in HTML report allowing user to launch VE and interrogate volume directly from HTML report
User Interface - General
- UI that is both easy to learn for beginners and highly-efficient for advanced users
- Interactive guided tour helps users learn the basic features on their own
- Carefully designed pictorial icons pop-up inside or next to the viewport in reaction to the position of the cursor, eliminating distraction and excessive mouse travel during
exploration
- Direct manipulation of objects seen in viewports. Cursor shape changes as objects are approached to indicate anticipated effect.
- Cross-correlated viewports help avoid “being lost” in 3D
- Maintains interactive update rates on a wide range of platforms, data sets and rendering modes. Optimization is applied across the whole screen using multiple rendering parameters and knowledge of UI state (e.g., cursor position).
- Viewports automatically resize and image grids automatically retile to match application window size.
- User can toggle between screen layouts (one 3-D viewport or 2x2 cross-correlated views)
- Adjusts to any screen resolution from 600x800 and up, at color depths of 16, 24 and 32 bits.
- Can associate special data file extensions (.sweep, .psweep) with the viewer, allowing the user to view data files by simply double-clicking on their icons in the Windows environment.
- Framework-based internal software architecture separates functionality from UI
implementation, allowing UI to be easily modified to fit custom requirements.
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