Virtual Unfolding of the Stomach Based on Volumetric Image Deformation

This paper describes a method for generating unfolded views of the stomach based on 3-D gray image deformation. Unfolded views can show the status of the stomach in one image. The previous method approximates the shape of the stomach using a surface model. This approximation is required for the stretching and reconstruction processes. The previous method had the problem that the intensity information inside the stomach wall was not reconstructed appropriately in the unfolded views, because the stretching process was performed by using only the surface information of the stomach. In the proposed method, we generate the approximated shape using a volumetric model. The volumetric model is deformed so as to generate unfolded views of the stomach. We applied the proposed method to five cases of 3-D abdominal CT images. The experimental results showed that the proposed method can unfolded views of the stomach without any undesirable artifacts. Also, it was possible to visualize the progress of unfolding process.