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Now showing 1 - 10 of 20
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    A Geometric Optimization Approach for the Detection and Segmentation of Multiple Aneurysms
    (The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2019) Lawonn, Kai; Meuschke, Monique; Wickenhöfer, Ralph; Preim, Bernhard; Hildebrandt, Klaus; Gleicher, Michael and Viola, Ivan and Leitte, Heike
    We present a method for detecting and segmenting aneurysms in blood vessels that facilitates the assessment of risks associated with the aneurysms. The detection and analysis of aneurysms is important for medical diagnosis as aneurysms bear the risk of rupture with fatal consequences for the patient. For risk assessment and treatment planning, morphological descriptors, such as the height and width of the aneurysm, are used. Our system enables the fast detection, segmentation and analysis of single and multiple aneurysms. The method proceeds in two stages plus an optional third stage in which the user interacts with the system. First, a set of aneurysm candidate regions is created by segmenting regions of the vessels. Second, the aneurysms are detected by a classification of the candidates. The third stage allows users to adjust and correct the result of the previous stages using a brushing interface. When the segmentation of the aneurysm is complete, the corresponding ostium curves and morphological descriptors are computed and a report including the results of the analysis and renderings of the aneurysms is generated. The novelty of our approach lies in combining an analytic characterization of aneurysms and vessels to generate a list of candidate regions with a classifier trained on data to identify the aneurysms in the candidate list. The candidate generation is modeled as a global combinatorial optimization problem that is based on a local geometric characterization of aneurysms and vessels and can be efficiently solved using a graph cut algorithm. For the aneurysm classification scheme, we identified four suitable features and modeled appropriate training data. An important aspect of our approach is that the resulting system is fast enough to allow for user interaction with the global optimization by specifying additional constraints via a brushing interface.
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    EuroRV3 2017: Frontmatter
    (Eurographics Association, 2017) Lawonn, Kai; Smit, Noeska; Cunningham, Douglas;
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    COMFIS - Comparative Visualization of Simulated Medical Flow Data
    (The Eurographics Association, 2022) Meuschke, Monique; Voß, Samuel; Eulzer, Pepe; Janiga, Gabor; Arens, Christoph; Wickenhöfer, Ralph; Preim, Bernhard; Lawonn, Kai; Renata G. Raidou; Björn Sommer; Torsten W. Kuhlen; Michael Krone; Thomas Schultz; Hsiang-Yun Wu
    Simulations of human blood and airflow are playing an increasing role in personalized medicine. Comparing flow data of different treatment scenarios or before and after an intervention is important to assess treatment options and success. However, existing visualization tools are either designed for the evaluation of a single data set or limit the comparison to a few partial aspects such as scalar fields defined on the vessel wall or internal flow patterns. Therefore, we present COMFIS, a system for the comparative visual analysis of two simulated medical flow data sets, e.g. before and after an intervention. We combine various visualization and interaction methods for comparing different aspects of the underlying, often time-dependent data. These include comparative views of different scalar fields defined on the vessel/mucous wall, comparative depictions of the underlying volume data, and comparisons of flow patterns. We evaluated COMFIS with CFD engineers and medical experts, who were able to efficiently find interesting data insights that help to assess treatment options.
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    Visualizing Carotid Blood Flow Simulations for Stroke Prevention
    (The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2021) Eulzer, Pepe; Meuschke, Monique; Klingner, Carsten M.; Lawonn, Kai; Borgo, Rita and Marai, G. Elisabeta and Landesberger, Tatiana von
    In this work, we investigate how concepts from medical flow visualization can be applied to enhance stroke prevention diagnostics. Our focus lies on carotid stenoses, i.e., local narrowings of the major brain-supplying arteries, which are a frequent cause of stroke. Carotid surgery can reduce the stroke risk associated with stenoses, however, the procedure entails risks itself. Therefore, a thorough assessment of each case is necessary. In routine diagnostics, the morphology and hemodynamics of an afflicted vessel are separately analyzed using angiography and sonography, respectively. Blood flow simulations based on computational fluid dynamics could enable the visual integration of hemodynamic and morphological information and provide a higher resolution on relevant parameters. We identify and abstract the tasks involved in the assessment of stenoses and investigate how clinicians could derive relevant insights from carotid blood flow simulations. We adapt and refine a combination of techniques to facilitate this purpose, integrating spatiotemporal navigation, dimensional reduction, and contextual embedding. We evaluated and discussed our approach with an interdisciplinary group of medical practitioners, fluid simulation and flow visualization researchers. Our initial findings indicate that visualization techniques could promote usage of carotid blood flow simulations in practice.
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    Aneulysis - A System for Aneurysm Data Analysis
    (The Eurographics Association, 2020) Meuschke, Monique; Wickenhöfer, Ralph; Preim, Bernhard; Lawonn, Kai; Kozlíková, Barbora and Krone, Michael and Smit, Noeska and Nieselt, Kay and Raidou, Renata Georgia
    We present ANEULYSIS, a system to improve risk assessment and treatment planning of cerebral aneurysms. Aneurysm treatment must be carefully examined as there is a risk of fatal outcome during surgery. Aneurysm growth, rupture, and treatment success depend on the interplay of vascular morphology and hemodynamics. Blood flow simulations can obtain the patient-specific hemodynamics. However, analyzing the time-dependent, multi-attribute data is time-consuming and error-prone. ANEULYSIS supports the analysis and visual exploration of aneurysm data including morphological and hemodynamic attributes. Since this is an interdisciplinary process involving both physicians and fluid mechanics experts, we provide a redundancy-free management of aneurysm data sets according to a consistent structure. Major contributions are an improved analysis of morphological aspects, simultaneous evaluation of wall- and flow-related characteristics as well as multiple attributes on the vessel wall, the assessment of mechanical wall processes as well as an automatic classification of the internal flow behavior. It was designed and evaluated in collaboration with domain experts who confirmed its usefulness and clinical necessity.
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    Visualizing Carotid Stenoses for Stroke Treatment and Prevention
    (The Eurographics Association, 2023) Eulzer, Pepe; Richter, Kevin; Hundertmark, Anna; Meuschke, Monique; Wickenhöfer, Ralph; Klingner, Carsten M.; Lawonn, Kai; Raidou, Renata; Kuhlen, Torsten
    Analyzing carotid stenoses - potentially lethal constrictions of the brain-supplying arteries - is a critical task in clinical stroke treatment and prevention. Determining the ideal type of treatment and point for surgical intervention to minimize stroke risk is considerably challenging. We propose a collection of visual exploration tools to advance the assessment of carotid stenoses in clinical applications and research on stenosis formation. We developed methods to analyze the internal blood flow, anatomical context, vessel wall composition, and to automatically and reliably classify stenosis candidates. We do not presume already segmented and extracted surface meshes but integrate streamlined model extraction and pre-processing along with the result visualizations into a single framework. We connect multiple sophisticated processing stages in one user interface, including a neural prediction network for vessel segmentation and automatic global diameter computation. We enable retrospective user control over each processing stage, greatly simplifying error detection and correction. The framework was developed and evaluated in multiple iterative user studies, involving a group of eight specialists working in stroke care (radiologists and neurologists). It is publicly available, along with a database of over 100 carotid bifurcation geometries that were extracted with the framework from computed tomography data. Further, it is a vital part of multiple ongoing studies investigating stenosis pathophysiology, stroke risk, and the necessity for surgical intervention.
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    Distance Field Visualization and 2D Abstraction of Vessel Tree Structures with on-the-fly Parameterization
    (The Eurographics Association, 2019) Lichtenberg, Nils; Krayer, Bastian; Hansen, Christian; Müller, Stefan; Lawonn, Kai; Kozlíková, Barbora and Linsen, Lars and Vázquez, Pere-Pau and Lawonn, Kai and Raidou, Renata Georgia
    In this paper, we make contributions to the visualization of vascular structures. Based on skeletal input data, we provide a combined 2D and implicit 3D visualization of vasculature, that is parameterized on-the-fly for illustrative visualization. We use an efficient algorithm that creates a distance field volume from triangles and extend it to handle skeletal tree data. Spheretracing this volume allows to visualize the vasculature in a flexible way, without the need to recompute the volume. Illustrative techniques, that have been frequently applied to vascular visualizations often require texture coordinates. Therefore, modifying an object-based algorithm, we propose an image-based, hierarchical optimization process that allows to derive periodic texture coordinates in a frame-coherent way and suits the implicit representation of the vascular structures. In addition to the 3D surface visualization, we propose a simple layout algorithm that applies a 2D parameterization to the skeletal tree nodes. This parameterization can be used to color-code the vasculature or to plot a 2D overview-graph, that highlights the branching topology of the skeleton. We transfer measurements, done in 3D space, to the 2D plot in order to avoid visual clutter and self occlusions in the 3D representation. A visual link between the 3D and 2D views is established via color codes and texture patterns. The potential of our pipeline is shown in several prototypical application scenarios.
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    Robustness Evaluation of CFD Simulations to Mesh Deformation
    (The Eurographics Association, 2019) Scheid-Rehder, Alexander; Lawonn, Kai; Meuschke, Monique; Kozlíková, Barbora and Linsen, Lars and Vázquez, Pere-Pau and Lawonn, Kai and Raidou, Renata Georgia
    CFD simulations are an increasingly important method for the non-invasive analysis of risk factors for aneurysm rupture. Their robustness, however, has to be examined more thoroughly before clinical use is possible. We present a novel framework that enables robustness evaluation of CFD simulation according to mesh deformation on patient-specific blood vessel geometry. Our tool offers a guided workflow to generate, run, and visualize OpenFOAM simulations, which significantly decreases the usual overhead of CFD simulations with OpenFOAM. Besides, the deformation of the original geometry allows the user to evaluate the robustness of the simulation without the need to repeat expensive operations of the data pre-processing phase. We assessed the robustness of CFD simulations by applying our framework to several aneurysm data sets.
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    Parameterization and Feature Extraction for the Visualization of Tree-like Structures
    (The Eurographics Association, 2018) Lichtenberg, Nils; Lawonn, Kai; Puig Puig, Anna and Schultz, Thomas and Vilanova, Anna and Hotz, Ingrid and Kozlikova, Barbora and Vázquez, Pere-Pau
    The study and visualization of vascular structures, using 3D models obtained from medical data, is an active field of research. Illustrative visualizations have been applied to this domain in multiple ways. Researchers have tried to make the geometric properties of vasculature more comprehensive and to augment the surface with representations of multivariate clinical data. Techniques that head beyond the application of color-maps or simple shading approaches require a sort of surface parameterization, i.e., texture coordinates, in order to overcome locality. When extracting 3D models, the computation of texture coordinates on the mesh is not always part of the data processing pipeline. We combine existing techniques to a simple, yet effective, parameterization approach that is suitable for tree-like structures. The parameterization is done w.r.t. to a pre-defined source vertex. For this, we present an automatic algorithm, that detects the root of a tree-structure. The parameterization is partly done in screen-space and recomputed per frame. However, the screen-space computation comes with positive features that are not present in object-space approaches. We show how the resulting texture coordinates can be used for varying hatching, contour parameterization, the display of decals, as an additional depth cue and feature extraction.
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    A Survey of Surface‐Based Illustrative Rendering for Visualization
    (© 2018 The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2018) Lawonn, Kai; Viola, Ivan; Preim, Bernhard; Isenberg, Tobias; Chen, Min and Benes, Bedrich
    In this paper, we survey illustrative rendering techniques for 3D surface models. We first discuss the field of illustrative visualization in general and provide a new definition for this sub‐area of visualization. For the remainder of the survey, we then focus on surface‐based models. We start by briefly summarizing the differential geometry fundamental to many approaches and discuss additional general requirements for the underlying models and the methods' implementations. We then provide an overview of low‐level illustrative rendering techniques including sparse lines, stippling and hatching, and illustrative shading, connecting each of them to practical examples of visualization applications. We also mention evaluation approaches and list various application fields, before we close with a discussion of the state of the art and future work.In this paper, we survey illustrative rendering techniques for 3D surface models. We first discuss the field of illustrative visualization in general and provide a new definition for this sub‐area of visualization. For the remainder of the survey, we then focus on surface‐based models. We start by briefly summarizing the differential geometry fundamental to many approaches and discuss additional general requirements for the underlying models and the methods' implementations. We then provide an overview of low‐level illustrative rendering techniques including sparse lines, stippling and hatching, and illustrative shading, connecting each of them to practical examples of visualization applications. We also mention evaluation approaches and list various application fields, before we close with a discussion of the state of the art and future work.