Three-dimensional reconstruction of skeletal muscle from MRI

Three-dimensional (3D) reconstructions of medical images can provide useful information to the radiologist, enabling delineation and spatial correlation of anatomic structures in one image rather than consecutive two-dimensional (2D) images. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is known to be a powerful technique for evaluation of skeletal muscle pathology and physiology. We investigated the role of 3D reconstruction from MRI images of pathological and healthy muscle, using volume rendering. The ability to easily delineate and recognize normal and injured muscle in the 3D images were dependent upon the original contrast between normal and injured muscle, spatial resolution, and anatomic complexity in the original slices, and also on imaging parameters such as volume averaging.