SiSCAN v.2 software

SiSCAN v.2 is a software product developed by Biomechanics Research Laboratory. It is an image-processing package designed to generate a 3-D surface objects from 2D image data. The software enables the user (e.g. the radiologist or the surgeon) to control and correct the segmentation of CT-scans. The generation of patient-specific final element bone model can be obtained as the output. This increased interpretive power has the potential to streamline biomedical diagnosis, analysis and surgical planning.

SiSCAN: Isolating Bone Segments

SiSCAN features

 SiSCAN provides numerous features to truly support multi-modal image analysis. The program supports region-of-interest processing and major image processing categories include: 

• Isolating bone segments:

Fully automated edge contour extraction is provided (interactive boundary detection for object segmentation). 

• Possibility of Bone surface correction

Manual editing, tracing and connection/deletion of multiple objects can be preformed using:

1. Touch tool

Touch tool is used for manual editing, erasing and restoring parts of 2D images (e.g. cracks and gaps ). 

2. Surgery tool  (e.g. for acetabulum reaming)

The user-friendly graphical user interface will provide information to surgeon to plan the intervention and to simulate the procedure on 3D model.

• Bone Threshold Automatic Calculation

Threshold is the first action performed. A region of interest (bone or tissue) can be selected by defining a range of gray values. The boundary of that range is the threshold value. 

• Interactive Surface Modeling

Each bone is automatically separated and labeled to make the selection process easier and also to enable separate bone processing.

SiSCAN : Surface Labeling

·        Cavity Filling:
Cavity filling fills the internal gaps and other imperfections in the bone mass.

• Tessellation

The marching cubes algorithm has been used for surface extraction and tessellation.

SiSCAN : Tessellation of Bone Geometry

                 Max Tessellation                                 Medium Tessellation                          Poor Tessellation

                          50412 Faces                                            45936 Faces                                      6308 Faces

• Geometry Simplification and Smoothing

By controlling the smoothing factor 3D model surface can be smoothened out. However, this is a constant tradeoff between accuracy of the model and computational efficiency.

·        ADPL-Format as an ANSYS Export Feature

ASCII file output of surface polygons is created for export to ANSYS. From the results of segmentation triangulated surface models are generated.

SiSCAN : Interface to finite elements

                                          LGW file (points and lines)                                     Hemi-Pelvis FE model

Software system is extended with additional modules for the segmentation of vascular trees and anatomical segmentation (tissue characterization) from medical images. The same process of segmentation for the bones can be applied for extracting a suitable discrete representation of the vascular network from the image data.

SiSCAN of a vascular tree and a human liver

Another example for the use of 3D models is the reconstruction of the liver from clinical data sets.

For additional information contact clopez17@uic.edu