System and method for fast texture-based tensor field visualization for dt-mri

A method for visualizing diffusion-tensor magnetic resonance images comprising the steps of:

• providing a diffusion-tensor magnetic resonance image (DT-MRI) volume, said image volume comprising a plurality of 3×3 diffusion tensors associated with a 3-dimensional grid of voxels;
• positioning and orienting a virtual camera for rendering said volume, said camera having an image plane;
• associating a billboard with each voxel, each said billboard being parallel with the image plane of the camera;
• applying a texture to each billboard, wherein said texture comprises an isotropic image;
• transforming each said texture into a pattern representative of said diffusion and transforming each said texture by the inverse of the diffusion tensor associated with the voxel to which the billboard is associated;
• and
• rendering said volume by rendering each visible billboard in said image volume, wherein a 2-dimensional (2D) visualization of said DT-MRI is produced.

A program storage device readable by a computer, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the computer to perform the method steps for visualizing diffusion-tensor magnetic resonance images, said method comprising the steps of:

• providing a diffusion-tensor magnetic resonance image (DT-MRI) volume, said image volume comprising a plurality of 3×3 diffusion tensors associated with a 3-dimensional grid of voxels;
• positioning and orienting a virtual camera for rendering said volume, said camera having an image plane, said camera's orientation being defined by its look, right and up vectors;
• associating a billboard with each voxel, each said billboard being parallel with the image plane of the camera, wherein said look, right and up vectors are used to orient each said billboard;
• applying a texture to each billboard, each said texture being transformed by the inverse of the diffusion tensor associated with the voxel to which the billboard is associated;
• and
• rendering said volume by rendering each visible billboard in said image volume, wherein a 2-dimensional (2D) visualization of said DT-MRI is produced.