A three-dimensional interactive atlas of cerebral arterial variants

The knowledge of cerebrovascular variants is essential in education, training, diagnosis and treatment. The current way of presentation of vasculature and, particularly, vascular variants is insufficient. Our purpose is to construct a three-dimensional (3D) interactive atlas of cerebral arterial variants along with exploration tools allowing the investigator just with a few clicks to better and faster understand the variants and their spatial relationships. A 3D model of the cerebral arterial system created earlier, fully labeled with names and diameters, is used as a reference. As the vast material about vascular variability is incomplete and not fully documented, our approach synthesizes variants in 3D based on existing knowledge. The variants are created from literature using a dedicated vascular editor and embedded into the reference model. Sixty 3D variants and branching patterns are created including the internal carotid, middle cerebral, anterior cerebral, posterior cerebral, vertebral and basilar arteries, and circle of Willis. Their prevalence rates are given. The atlas is developed to explore the variants individually or embedded into the reference vasculature. Real-time interactive manipulation of variants and reference vasculature (rotate/zoom/pan/view) is provided. This atlas facilitates the investigator to easily get familiarized with the variants and rapidly explore them. It aids in presentation of vascular variants and understanding their spatial relationships either individually or embedded into the surrounding reference cerebrovasculature. It is useful for medical students, educators to prepare teaching materials, and clinicians for scan interpretation. It is easily extensible with additional variant instances, new variants, branching patterns, and supporting textual materials.