Visualization and interaction in the atlas of the human brain, head and neck

Abstract

Our ultimate objective is to create a holistic and reference atlas of the whole adult human brain along with the head and neck. Several techniques have been employed to create atlases. Here we discuss the atlas design and use from a point of view of two key techniques, visualization and interaction. For visualization, surface rendering of a geometrical model of the brain, head and neck is employed. Geometrical model ensures anatomic parcellability, high (sub-pixel) resolution, editibility, extendibility, structure separability, structure-to-structure conflict detection, and integration a knowledge-based content with the atlas. Interaction allows the user to create and explore any region of interest along with its surroundings just with a few clicks, taking into account that the atlas provides a rich set of functions and the number of atlas components is about 3,000. There are seven types of interaction enabling to: select and deselect tissue classes/groups/individual structures, do real-time manipulation, do virtual dissections, select and scroll the original scans, query a structure to get its label or location, get stereotactic coordinates and measure distances, and support other functionality. This design of visualization and interaction provides a fast and easy to use solution, and allows the atlas to run on desktop and mobile iPad and Android-based platforms.