Feature-based interactive visualization of volumetric medical data

To provide fast display and manipulation of the 3-D reconstruction of volumetric data, our system uses surface rendering which reduces 3-D data sets to geometric primitives that have been implemented in the SGIs hardware, so a better performance of rendering speed is obtained. Our system supports both basic and advanced navigation features of medical data sets, including translating, rotating, zooming in/out, advanced cutting functions (transparent alignment, multi-plane cut, cut in any orientation and depth), classification of tissues, and centralization function. The 3D interface of our system provides users realistic view and feature-based manipulation of the medical data sets to extract useful information for medical training and education.