Time-varying three-dimensional vector field visualisation for the analysis of retrobulbar fat mobility during eye motion

Retrobulbar fat, or the fat behind the eyeball, plays in important role in eye motion. In order to gain a better understanding of retrobulbar fat mobility during eye motion, MRI datasets of the eyes of a healthy subject were acquired during seven different gaze directions. The Demons deformable registration algorithm was used to derive time-dependent three-dimensional deformation vectorfields from these datasets. Visualisation techniques were applied to these datasets in order to investigate fat mobility in specificregions of interest. In two of the three regions of interest, fat moved half as fast as the embedded structures. In other words, when the muscles and the optic nerve that are embedded in the fat move, the fat partly moves along with these structures and partly flows around them. This raises compelling research questions.

@InProceedings { BGRWSPHS05a,
  author       = "Botha, Charl P. and Graaf, Thijs de and Root, Ronald and Wielopolski, Piotr and Schutte, Sander and Post,
                  Frits H. and Helm, Frans C.T. van der and Simonsz, Huib",
  title        = "Time-varying three-dimensional vector field visualisation for the analysis of retrobulbar fat mobility during
                  eye motion",
  booktitle    = "ASCI 2005 - Proceedings of the 11th annual conference of the Advanced School for Computing and Imaging",
  month        = "June",
  year         = "2005",
  editor       = "B.J.A. Kr{\"o}se and H.J. Bos and E.A. Hendriks and J.W.J. Heijnsdijk",
  note         = "90-803086-0-9",
  url          = "http://graphics.tudelft.nl/Publications-new/2005/BGRWSPHS05a"
}