A PENTIUM PERSONAL COMPUTER-BASED CRANIOFACIAL 3-DIMENSIONAL IMAGING AND ANALYSIS SYSTEM

Personal computer (PC)-based computing is now ubiquitous in common con sumer applications. Although PCs have equaled or surpassed engineering workstations in basic computing power and economy, there is still str ong workstation dependency for imaging applications. This article demo nstrates that a complete system, based on a Pentium PC (Intel Corporat ion, Santa Clara, CA) and readily available and inexpensive software, can be built very economically for effective execution of most of the commonly used three-dimensional imaging operations. For the craniofaci al application, the Pentium system offers a twofold speed advantage ov er a Spare 20 system using similar three-dimensional processing softwa re. The Pentium system allows interactive fuzzy volume rendering, and manipulation and analysis of complex hard and soft-tissue structures.