Authors

Ziyi Zheng

Type

Text

Type

Dissertation

Advisor

Mueller, Klaus , Gu, Xianfeng | Mueller, Klaus | Gu, Xianfeng | Kaufman, Arie | Helm, Patrick

Date

2012-12-01

Keywords

ant colony optimization, Computed Tomography, GPU, verification, view suggestion, volume visualization | Computer science--Medical imaging and radiology

Department

Department of Computer Science

Language

en_US

Source

This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/11401/71476

Publisher

The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.

Format

application/pdf

Abstract

Cone-beam CT (Computed Tomography) has become a major imaging technique thanks to its image-fidelity and scanning time. Scientists and practitioners frequently utilize volume visualization tools for diagnosis and decision-making. The thesis work presented here seeks to improve on the volume visualization pipeline for CT generated data. We summarize our contributions into three categories. Cone-beam CT scanners typically use analytical algorithms to reconstruct volumetric data. We studied the interpolation error of visualization tools and built a verifiable visualization tool and efficient data structure to enable users to enjoy interactive rendering speed to freely examine the high resolution data at minimal error. For the recently developed low-dose CT which suffers from either noisy or an insufficient number of X-ray projections, we proposed an optimization framework to determine effective parameters for the data denoising and volume reconstruction stage. We have devised an efficient method to optimize various parameters for iterative CT reconstruction using an ant colony optimization algorithm. We also developed an interactive user interface to visually explore various acquisition settings. Our preliminary results show that the learned parameters can be readily applied to similar scans with promising results. Lastly, we provide visual guidance which can boost user efficiency when exploring the data. For guided visualization, we propose a view suggestion framework rooted in high-dimensional feature space which does not rely on particular transfer functions or volume segmentations as an initial input. | 112 pages

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.