BrainView: a computer program for reconstruction and interactive visualization of 3D data sets

A computer program, BrainView, is presented which has been developed to rec onstruct, visualize, and evaluate three dimensional (3D) biological and med ical imaging data, such as images from histological sections, confocal micr oscopy, or magnetic resonance tomography. The program allows the simultaneo us display of three orthogonal sectional planes, i.e. the horizontal, front al, and sagittal planes, of reconstructed data and to move interactively th rough the brain to optimally assess the 3D data set. Furthermore, any arbit rary sectioning plane through a data set can be visualized. Implemented war ping algorithms allow the geometric normalization of data sets of different animals, modalities or developmental stages as a preprocessing for the com parative evaluation of the data. For a quantitative analysis, data sets can be segmented based on equal grey levels and the corresponding equidensitie s were calculated. The program works on Apple-Macintosh computers and has a user-friendly graphical interface. The BrainView program is discussed in c omparison to related programs. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights re served.