Evaluation of a Bricked Volume Layout for a Medical Workstation based on Java

Information

• Publication Type: Journal Paper with Conference Talk
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • DiagVis: Diagnostic Visualization for Medical Applications
• Date: January 2007
• Journal: Journal of WSCG
• Volume: 15
• Number: 1-3
• Location: Plzen, Czech Republic
• Lecturer: Peter Kohlmann
• ISSN: 1213-6972
• Event: WSCG 2007
• Conference date: 29. January 2007 – 1. February 2007
• Pages: 83 – 90
• Keywords: MPR, Bricked Volume Layout, Medical Visualization, Medical Workstation

Abstract

Volumes acquired for medical examination purposes are constantly increasing in size. For this reason, the computer’s memory is the limiting factor for visualizing the data. Bricking is a well-known concept used for rendering large data sets. The volume data is subdivided into smaller blocks to achieve better memory utilization. Until now, the vast majority of medical workstations use a linear volume layout. We implemented a bricked volume layout for such a workstation based on Java as required by our collaborative company partner to evaluate different common access patterns to the volume data. For rendering, we were mainly interested to see how the performance will differ from the traditional linear volume layout if we generate images of arbitrarily oriented slices via Multi-Planar Reformatting (MPR). Furthermore, we tested access patterns which are crucial for segmentation issues like a random access to data values and a simulated region growing. Our goal was to find out if it makes sense to change the volume layout of a medical workstation to benefit from bricking. We were also interested to identify the tasks where problems might occur if bricking is applied. Overall, our results show that it is feasible to use a bricked volume layout in the stringent context of a medical workstation implemented in Java.

Additional Files and Images

Weblinks

No further information available.

BibTeX

@article{Kohlmann-2007-EBV,
  title =      "Evaluation of a Bricked Volume Layout for a Medical
               Workstation based on Java",
  author =     "Peter Kohlmann and Stefan Bruckner and Armin Kanitsar and
               Eduard Gr\"{o}ller",
  year =       "2007",
  abstract =   "Volumes acquired for medical examination purposes are
               constantly increasing in size. For this reason, the
               computer’s memory is the limiting factor for visualizing
               the data. Bricking is a well-known concept used for
               rendering large data sets. The volume data is subdivided
               into smaller blocks to achieve better memory utilization.
               Until now, the vast majority of medical workstations use a
               linear volume layout. We implemented a bricked volume layout
               for such a workstation based on Java as required by our
               collaborative company partner to evaluate different common
               access patterns to the volume data. For rendering, we were
               mainly interested to see how the performance will differ
               from the traditional linear volume layout if we generate
               images of arbitrarily oriented slices via Multi-Planar
               Reformatting (MPR). Furthermore, we tested access patterns
               which are crucial for segmentation issues like a random
               access to data values and a simulated region growing. Our
               goal was to find out if it makes sense to change the volume
               layout of a medical workstation to benefit from bricking. We
               were also interested to identify the tasks where problems
               might occur if bricking is applied. Overall, our results
               show that it is feasible to use a bricked volume layout in
               the stringent context of a medical workstation implemented
               in Java.",
  month =      jan,
  journal =    "Journal of WSCG",
  volume =     "15",
  number =     "1-3",
  issn =       "1213-6972",
  pages =      "83--90",
  keywords =   "MPR, Bricked Volume Layout, Medical Visualization, Medical
               Workstation",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2007/Kohlmann-2007-EBV/",
}