3-D SEGMENTATION OF MEDICAL STRUCTURES BY INTEGRATION OF RAYCASTING WITH ANATOMIC KNOWLEDGE

We present a graphically interactive procedure which is used to regist er a digital anatomic brain atlas with the tomographic patient volume. Patient structures to be segmented are outlined by local elastic defo rmation of corresponding objects from the anatomy model. This is perfo rmed in voxel space using a cost minimization procedure. The anatomic knowledge acquired in this manner is stored in a patient specific volu me dataset and guides a raycaster with respect to the localization of object surfaces in order to control the result of the deformation proc ess. Thus objects, which so far could not have been segmented appropri ately or only after tedious manual editing efforts, become accessible by physicians. We present several results demonstrating the high quali ty and practicality of the method.