Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A Visualization System for Interactive Exploration of the Cardiac Anatomy

  • Education & Training
  • Published:
Journal of Medical Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Because of the complex and fine structure, visualization of the heart still remains a challenging task, which makes it an active research topic. In this paper, we present a visualization system for medical data, which takes advantage of the recent graphics processing unit (GPU) and can provide real-time cardiac visualization. This work focuses on investigating the anatomical structure visualization of the human heart, which is fundamental to the cardiac visualization, medical training and diagnosis assistance. Several state-of-the-art cardiac visualization methods are integrated into the proposed system and a task specified visualization method is proposed. In addition, auxiliary tools are provided to generate user specified visualization results. The contributions of our work lie in two-fold: for doctors and medical staff, the system can provide task specified visualization with interactive visualization tools; for researchers, the proposed platform can serve as a baseline for comparing different rendering methods and can easily incorporate new rendering methods. Experimental results show that the proposed system can provide favorable cardiac visualization results in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/

  2. We have uploaded the source codes of the proposed system to https://sourceforge.net/projects/cardiacvis/.

References

  1. Alickovic, E., and Subasi, A., Medical decision support system for diagnosis of heart arrhythmia using dwt and random forests classifier. J. Med. Syst. 40(108):1–12, 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Baig, M. M., and Gholamhosseini, H., Smart health monitoring systems: an overview of design and modeling. J. Med. Syst. 37(2):1–14, 2013.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Blinn, J. F.: Models of light reflection for computer synthesized pictures. In: ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, pp. 192–198, ACM (1977)

  4. Bruckner, S., and Gröller, M. E.: Volumeshop: an interactive system for direct volume illustration. In: Visualization, pp. 477–480 (2005)

  5. Cai, K., Yang, R., Li, L., Ou, S., Chen, Y., Dou, J., A semi-automatic coronary artery segmentation framework using mechanical simulation. J. Med. Syst. 39(10):129, 2015.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Cetin, M., and Iskurt, A., An automatic 3-d reconstruction of coronary arteries by stereopsis. J. Med. Syst. 40(73):1–8 , 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Cheng, C. C., Lu, C. F., Hsieh, T. Y., Lin, Y. J., Taur, J. S., Chen, Y. F., Design of a computer-assisted system to automatically detect cell types using ana if images for the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases. J. Med. Syst. 39(10):1–12, 2015.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Choi, G., Xiong, G., Cheng, C. P., Taylor, C. A., Methods for characterizing human coronary artery deformation from cardiac-gated computed tomography data. Biomedical Engineering. IEEE Trans. 61(10):2582–2592, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Gai, C., Wang, K., Zhang, L., Zuo, W., Strategy of statistics-based visualization for segmented 3d cardiac volume data set. Adv. Int. Comp. 6838:250–256, 2012.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Gi, S. O., Lee, Y. J., Koo, H. R., Lee, S. P., Lee, K. H., Kim, K. N., Kang, S. J., Lee, J. H., Lee, J. W., The effect of electrode designs based on the anatomical heart location for the non-contact heart activity measurement. J. Med. Syst. 39(191):1–17, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Kharche, S., Margetts, G. S. L., Leng, J., Holden, A. V., Zhang, H., Simulation of clinical electrophysiology in 3d human atria: a high-performance computing and high-performance visualization application. Concurrency and Computation: Practice & Experience 20(11):1317–1328, 2008.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Korostelev, M., Gong, N., Hu, A., Bai, L., Wen, K. Y.: M 2-pass: Sms-based mobile patient support and responding to challenges of transitional care. In: 2014 7th International Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Informatics (BMEI), IEEE, pp. 762–768 (2014)

  13. Kurzendorfer, T., Girard, E., Gralewski, K., Kleinoeder, A., Kiraly, A. P., Strobel, N., Dori, Y., New biplane x-ray magnetic resonance image fusion prototype for 3d enhanced cardiac catheterization in congenital heart diseases. J. Cardiovasc. Magn. Reson. 16(Suppl1):O103, 2014.

    Article  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  14. Lum, E. B., and Ma, K. L.: Lighting transfer functions using gradient aligned sampling. In: Proceedings of the Conference on Visualization’04, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 289–296 (2004)

  15. Mandal, I., and Sairam, N., Accurate prediction of coronary artery disease using reliable diagnosis system. J. Med. Syst. 36(5):3353–3373, 2012.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  16. Max, N., Optical models for direct volume rendering. Visualization and Computer Graphics. IEEE Trans. 1 (2):99–108, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Melillo, P., Orrico, A., Scala, P., Crispino, F., Pecchia, L., Cloud-based smart health monitoring system for automatic cardiovascular and fall risk assessment in hypertensive patients. J. Med. Syst. 39(10):109, 2015.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  18. Panigrahy, D., Rakshit, M., Sahu, P. K., Fpga implementation of heart rate monitoring system. J. Med. Syst. 40(49):1–12, 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Raeiatibanadkooki, M., Quchani, S. R., KhalilZade, M., Bahaadinbeigy, K., Compression and encryption of ecg signal using wavelet and chaotically huffman code in telemedicine application. J. Med. Syst. 40(73):1–8, 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Sepehri, A. A., Kocharian, A., Janani, A., Gharehbaghi, A., An intelligent phonocardiography for automated screening of pediatric heart diseases. J. Med. Syst. 40(16):1–10, 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Villarreal, V., Hervas, R., Fontecha, J., Bravo, J., Mobile monitoring framework to design parameterized and personalized m-health applications according to the patients diseases. J. Med. Syst. 39(10):1–6, 2015.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Wang, K., Yang, F., Zuo, W., Ding, N., Zhang, H.: Effective transfer function for interactive visualization and multivariate volume data. In: Proceedings of Biomedical Engineering and Informatics, pp. 272–276 (2011)

  23. Wang, K., Zhang, L., Gai, C., Zuo, W.: Illustrative visualization of segmented human cardiac anatomy based on context-preserving model. In: Computing in Cardiology, pp. 485–488 (2011)

  24. Yang, F., Lu, W., Zhang, L., Zuo, W., Wang, K., Zhang, H.: Fusion visualization for cardiac anatomical and ischemic models with depth weighted optic radiation function. In: Computers in Cardiology, pp. 937–940. IEEE, Nice, France (2015)

  25. Yang, F., Zhang, L., Lu, W., Zuo, W., Wang, K., Li, Y., Multivariate cardiac data visualization based on multi-dimentional transfer function with ray distance. Biomed. Mater. Eng. 24(6):3025–3032, 2014.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  26. Yang, F., Zuo, W., Wang, K., Zhang, h.: 3d cardiac mri data visualization based on volume data preprocessing and transfer function design. In: Computers in Cardiology, pp. 717–720. IEEE, Bologna, Italy (2008)

  27. Yang, F., Zuo, W., Wang, K., Zhang, H.: Visualization of segmented cardiac anatomy with accelerated rendering method. In: Computing in Cardiology, IEEE, pp. 789–792 (2009)

  28. Zhang, L., Gai, C., Wang, K., lu, W., Zuo, W.: Gpu-based high performance wave propagation simulation of ischemia in anatomically detailed ventricle. In: Computing in Cardiology, pp. 469–472 (2011)

  29. Zhang, L., Gai, C., Wang, K., Zuo, W.: Real-time interactive heart illustration platform via hardware accelerated rendering. In: 2011 3rd International Conference on Advanced Computer Control (ICACC), pp. 497–501 (2011)

  30. Zhang, L., Wang, K., Zhang, H., Zuo, W., Liang, X., Shi, J., Illustrative cardiac visualization via perception-based lighting enhancement. Journal of Medical Imaging and Health Informatics 580(1):15–22, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Zhang, L., Wang, K., Zuo, W., Gai, C., G-heart a gpu-based system for electrophysiological simulation and multi-modality cardiac visualization. J. Comput. 9(2):360–367, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Zhang, L., Wang, K., Zuo, W., Yang, M., Real-time multi-volume rendering for 3d electrophysiological data visualization based on graphics processing unit. ICIC Express Letters Part B: Applications 4(6):1–6, 2013.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Zhang, Q., Eagleson, R., Peters, T., Gpu-based visualization and synchronization of 4-d cardiac mr and ultrasound images. IEEE Trans. Inf. Technol. Biomed. 16(5):878–890, 2012.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The work is partially supported by the Youth Foundation of Harbin University under Grants No. HUYF2013-025, the Higher Education and Teaching Reform project under Grants No. JG2014011155 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grants No. 61173086 and No. 61502275. This work was also supported in part by Scientific Research Found of Shandong University (No. 1050513200007), Art and Science Planning Project of Heilongjiang Province (No. 2014A015) and the innovation found of Harbin (No. 2013RFQXJ110). The authors thank anonymous reviewers and the Editor-in-Chief for their helpful comments and suggestions. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Mr. James Kollmer for proofreading this paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Art and Design, Harbin University, Harbin, 150086, China

    Lei Zhang & Dongchen Han

  2. School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China

    Kuanquan Wang, Yue Zhang & Xiaoqing Liang

  3. School of Mechanical, Electrical and Information Engineering, Shandong University, Weihai, 264209, China

    Fei Yang

  4. School of Engineering, Harbin University, Harbin, 150086, China

    Wenjing Lu

  5. School of Software, Harbin University, Harbin, 150086, China

    Kechao Wang

  6. Electrical & Computer Engineering, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, 19122, USA

    Ying Julie Zhu

Authors
  1. Lei Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Kuanquan Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Fei Yang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Wenjing Lu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Kechao Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Yue Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Xiaoqing Liang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Dongchen Han
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Ying Julie Zhu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lei Zhang.

Additional information

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Education & Training

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Zhang, L., Wang, K., Yang, F. et al. A Visualization System for Interactive Exploration of the Cardiac Anatomy. J Med Syst 40, 135 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-016-0480-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-016-0480-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation