Analysis of 3D segmented anatomical districts through grey-levels mapping

Nowadays, image processing and 3D shape analysis are an integral part of clinical practice and have the potentiality to support clinicians with advanced analysis and visualization techniques. The main contribution of the paper is the integration of these two approaches in order to increase the amount of information available and, thus, allow a more accurate analysis of each patient. Given a segmented anatomical district, we propose a novel mapping of volumetric data onto the segmented surface. The grey levels of the image voxels are mapped through a volume-surface correspondence map, which defines a grey level texture on the segmented surface. The resulting texture mapping is coherent to the local morphology of the segmented anatomical structure and provides an enhanced visual representation of the anatomical district. The integration of volume-based and surface-based information in a unique 3D representation also supports the identification and characterization of morphological landmarks and pathology evaluations.