A variational framework for 3D colonic polyp visualization in virtual colonoscopy

Colorectal cancer includes cancer of the colon, rectum, anus and appendix. Since it is largely preventable, it is extremely important to detect and treat the colorectal cancer in the earliest stage. Virtual colonoscopy is an emerging screening technique for colon cancer. One component of virtual colonoscopy, image pre-processing, is important for colonic polyp detection/ diagnosis, feature extraction and classification. This paper introduces a general variational approach based framework for a computer aided diagnosis system for colorectal cancer. It includes techniques for 3D colon segmentation, 3D colon object reconstruction by iso-surface generation, and 3D centerline extraction. The proposed framework has been validated on 22 real CT colonography datasets.