Vascular editor: from angiographic images to 3D vascular models

Modern imaging techniques are able to generate high-resolution multimodal angiographic scans. The analysis of vasculature using numerous 2D tomographic images is time consuming and tedious, while 3D modeling and visualization enable presentation of the vasculature in a more convenient and intuitive way. This calls for development of interactive tools facilitating processing of angiographic scans and enabling creation, editing, and manipulation of 3D vascular models. Our objective is to develop a vascular editor (VE) which provides a suitable environment for experts to create and manipulate 3D vascular models correlated with surrounding anatomy. The architecture, functionality, and user interface of the VE are presented. The VE includes numerous interactive tools for building a vascular model from multimodal angiographic scans, editing, labeling, and manipulation of the resulting 3D model. It also provides comprehensive tools for vessel visualization, correlation of 2D and 3D representations, and tracing of small vessels of subpixel size. Education, research, and clinical applications of the VE are discussed, including the atlas of cerebral vasculature. To our best knowledge, there are no other systems offering similar functionality as the VE does.