Automated 3D Visualization of Brain Cancer

Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) visualization in cancer control has seen recent progress due to the benefits it offers to the treatment, education, and understanding of the disease. This work identifies the need for an application that directly processes two-dimensional (2D) DICOM images for the segmentation of a brain tumor and the generation of an interactive 3D model suitable for enabling multisensory learning and visualization. A new software application (M-3Ds) was developed to meet these objectives with three modes of segmentation (manual, automatic, and hybrid) for evaluation. M-3Ds software was designed to mitigate the cognitive load and empower health care professionals in their decision making for improved patient outcomes and safety. Comparison of mode accuracy was evaluated. Industrial standard software programs were employed to verify and validate the results of M-3Ds using quantitative volumetric comparison. The study determined that M-3Ds‘ hybrid mode was the highest accuracy with least user intervention for brain tumor segmentation and suitable for the clinical workflow. This paper presents a novel approach to improve medical education, diagnosis, treatment for either surgical planning or radiotherapy of brain cancer.