An Image Enhancement Procedure for 3D Visualization of Liver CT Data

In this paper we present an image enhancement procedure for 3D visualization of CT image data in a liver study. The procedure consists of the following two steps: 1) segmentation of the liver volume from the image data; and 2) adaptive noise filtering of the liver volume for the purpose of enhancing the visibility of vascular features in the liver. The processed liver volume is visualized using the technique of maximum intensity projection (MIP), where projection images from multiple view angles are generated and visualized in cine display. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed procedure can greatly improve the visibility of the vascular features in the MIP images, enabling intuitive perception of the vascular system in the liver. In addition, the procedure is computationally efficient and requires little user intervention