3D Reconstruction of CT Scans For Visualization in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Computed tomography allows analyzing the internal structure of an object, which is useful especially in medicine. The standard visualization displays scans in the 2D plane. 3D reconstruction of scans provides a complex image of the morphology of the scanned object. Matlab is a software commonly used for image processing and analysis. It includes Medical Image Processing Toolbox for displaying data from CT scan in DICOM format. However, it is not possible with this toolbox to export the dataset of the image as a 3D object. Therefore, the aim of the paper is the implementation of a toolbox for loading and displaying data as a 3D reconstruction. This toolbox allows the user to export the data in OBJ or STL format. That allows the user (i) to visualize the 3D models in virtual reality and (ii) to prepare the model for 3D printing. The OBJ model is imported to Blender and then exported out with a texture as an object file. In Unity, we created a 3D scene and imported model. The advantage of displaying the 3D model in virtual reality is a more realistic view of the shape and dimension of an object.