A target is continuously observed and stereoscopic three-dimensional image information of the target is recorded. A transmitter unit irradiates a target with suitable radiation, an image recording unit records radiation images of the target, a rotating unit incrementally positions the target between the transmitting and image recording units, injecting means places a contrast material into the target, a memory stores a first set of reference images of the target for predetermined number of angular increments prior to injection of said contrast material and stores second set of contrast images for each angular increment of rotation of the target after injection of the contrast material, an arithmetic unit produces a set of drawn or subtractive images of the target from the stored reference and contrast image data, and an indicator unit displays two drawn images of the target that are separated by a certain angular difference so that the two images can be viewed in three dimension using a stereo-scope.
A method and apparatus are disclosed for predicting prior to injection an organ specific contrast enhancement in a patient for a preselected contrast injection protocol for pre-determining a computed tomography scan. The invention is preferably implemented in a computer program which creates a mathematical model of human cardiovascular physiology in a hypothetical patient with a specific body habitus subjected to the pre-selected contrast injection protocol. The predicted contrast enhancement is then displayed for operator approval and may be then used to control a CT scanner to perform the scan with the pre-selected injection protocol. The mathematical model includes models of organs and vessels using differential equations to describe mass transport of contrast agent through the cardiovascular system.
An image transfer system is provided with an image transfer controller which transfers image information input from image input systems to selected one of a plurality of image handling systems. Destination image handling systems for image information are entered in a memory in advance by the kinds of the image information. The kind of the image information is read out from information attached to the image information and input into the image transfer controller. When image information is input, the image transfer controller reads out destination image handling system corresponding to the kind of the image information from the memory and transfers the image information to the destination image handling system.
An apparatus and method are specialized in utilizing a three-dimensional(3-D) time-dependent image data, which is obtained by dynamic scanning in devices such as an X-ray computed tomography device. The dynamic scanning is carried out at a fixed slice layer in a patient body at a certain time interval. When an line-selecting line is set in a 2-D scanned image, a part of the 3-D time-dependent image data, displayed on the TV monitor, the data corresponding to the designated line in the 3-D time-dependent image data can be converted into a 2-D time-dependent image data by an image data conversion unit. The 2-D time-dependent image data is displayed on the monitor and it appears as degrees of density on the screen and shows dynamical image changing with the scanning time. Moreover, when profile-selecting line is designated in the 2-D time-dependent image, a profile forming unit forms a profile data concerning image data values at an axis designated by the profile-selecting line. The profile data is visualized as a time curve on the monitor, and offers a quantitative analysis.
A method of extracting a feature of an image, includes: a first step of performing a logarithmic conversion process for each pixel of an image taken by an electron microscope to carry out non-linear image enhancement; a second step of performing an N(N is a predetermined value) valued process for each pixel of the image underwent the logarithmic conversion process, threshold values for the N valued process being obtained by dividing the whole range of gray levels of the pixels by N, and gray level of the pixel being one of N constant gray level values by the N valued process; a third step of performing a partial differentiatial process in X- and Y-directions for each pixel of the image obtained by the second step, to make "0" the gray levels of pixels within the same area divided by the N valued process and make only the boundary between different areas divided by the N valued process to have a certain gray level; and a fourth step of detecting the boundary and extracting a feature of said image.
An image processing method and the apparatus thereof for approximating an object shape and reconstructing the corresponding image by subjecting a radial range image to approximating with polygons and reconstructing an image from these polygons execute the following processes. At block B210, reading a radial range image data is executed. At block B220, a plural of different resolution radial range images are generated based upon the read radial range image. At block B230, normal vectors, according to each resolution of a radial range image, are calculated. At block B240, an edge-map having a plural of edges is generated in such a manner that a plural of edges are generated depending upon the resulting normal vectors and the radial range images of different resolutions. At block B250, the edge-maps of all kinds of resolutions are ORed to form a synthesized map. The synthesized map is subjected to correcting crossing and isolated edges. At block B260, each polygon is divided into a plural of triangles. At block B270, assigning 3 dimensional coordinate values and the normal vector generated at block B230 to each apex and the corresponding triangle plane respectively, is executed. At block B280, eliminating unnecessary triangle gaps around a T-shaped point is executed.
