3D visualization of segmented cruciate ligaments

A fuzzy approach to segmentation of the cruciate ligaments of the knee joint and a three dimensional visualisation method are presented in this paper. The cruciate ligaments are the major stabilizers of the knee. The ligaments injuries are common nowadays and a correct diagnostics, preceding the surgical therapy is a very important task. Segmentation of the ligaments is difficult due to a poor visibility of edges in some cases of injuries and their appearance on a small number of slides at Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The method described here is based on fuzzy connectedness principles. It creates a fuzzy connectivity scene by assigning a strength of connectedness to each possible path between some predefined seed point and any other image element. Then such scene is thresholded to produce final segmentation result. The conventional fuzzy connectedness method with Dijkstra algorithm for creating the fuzzy connectivity scene has been implemented in a 3D space. The object, being the result of segmentation process, is visualised in the Visualisation Toolkit (VTK) environment. The method has been tested on a set of images. An example of its performance is shown along with some plans for future research.