AN OBJECT-ORIENTED SYSTEM FOR 3D MEDICAL IMAGE-ANALYSIS

As part of a European Commission-funded research project on medical im age analysis, we have developed a system aimed at solving a real clini cal problem: the outlining of the target volume and organs at risk for three-dimensional conformal radiation treatment planning. The clinica l requirement is to make this process less tedious and time-consuming. We show how object-oriented design techniques can be used to good eff ect in a collaborative project such as this, so that image segmentatio n and other algorithms from a number of different partners in the cons ortium can be integrated into one system for comparative evaluation by the clinical partners. We describe in some detail two of these algori thms, one a straightforward region and volume grower, in which particu lar attention has been paid to adapting the user interface to suit cli nical needs, and the other an interactive tool using b-spline surface patches for direct three-dimensional segmentation. We report on the cl inical feedback we have received, which indicates that the most techni cally advanced algorithms are not necessarily the most useful from a c linician's point of view.