Extracting oblique planes from serial CT sections

Although geometric principles describing planes oblique to an orthogonal image data set are well understood, no implementation has been offered for their practical specification, extraction, and display in a clinical environment. Fast image generation and ease of user specification-requisite credentials for successful clinical implementations-are handicapped by the large volume of data to process. Other difficulties further complicate an interactive solution. Once oblique planes are generated, their orientation is often difficult to perceive without visual cues that aid their registration with standard image formats. In addition, Moire patterns introduced by digital aliasing often currupt resultant views. In this paper, techniques are outlined for simplifying oblique plane specification, a methodology is presented for image construction, and an interactive approach is illustrated to register images for such general view planes. Finally, digital aliasing of oblique planes is discussed, and a solution is given for this application.