Exploration of {4D MRI} Blood-Flow using Stylistic Visualization

Insight into the dynamics of blood-flow considerably improves the understanding of the complex cardiovascular system and its pathologies. Advances in MRI technology enable acquisition of 4D blood-flow data, providing quantitative blood-flow velocities over time. The currently typical slice-by-slice analysis requires a full mental reconstruction of the unsteady blood-flow field, which is a tedious and highly challenging task, even for skilled physicians. We endeavor to alleviate this task by means of comprehensive visualization and interaction techniques. In this paper we present a framework for pre-clinical cardiovascular research, providing tools to both interactively explore the 4D blood-flow data and depict the essential blood-flow characteristics. The framework encompasses a variety of visualization styles, comprising illustrative techniques as well as improved methods from the established field of flow visualization. Each of the incorporated styles, including exploded planar reformats, flow-direction highlights, and arrow-trails, locally captures the blood-flow dynamics and may be initiated by an interactively probed vessel cross-section. Additionally, we present the results of an evaluation with domain experts, measuring the value of each of the visualization styles and related rendering parameters.

@Article { PBCGV10,
  author       = "Pelt, R.F.P. van and Bescos, Javier Olivan and Breeuwer, Marcel and Clough, R.E. and Groeller, Meister Eduard
                  and Haar Romeny, B.M. ter and Vilanova, Anna",
  title        = "Exploration of {4D MRI} Blood-Flow using Stylistic Visualization",
  journal      = "IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proc. IEEE Visualization)",
  number       = "6",
  volume       = "16",
  pages        = "1339--1347",
  year         = "2010",
  url          = "http://graphics.tudelft.nl/Publications-new/2010/PBCGV10"
}