Technical application of three-dimensional visualization and measurement for breast cancer using multidetector-row CT scanner

Abstract

This paper describes an integrated methodology that addresses the operation of 3D imaging and measurement for the diagnosis and surgical operation of breast cancer. The main system for breast CT imaging used a multi-slice CT scanner and 3D-workstation. The clinical sequence was performed in three phases with non-contrast and biphasic contrast-enhanced studies that were performed with multi-slice helical CT scanning. Acquired DICOM images were directly sent to the 3D workstation that implemented our developed functions. Four types of transfer functions (mammary skin, vessel, lymph node, and tumor) were set based on region-of-interest (ROI) measurements. After that, two types of segmentation were prepared with volumetry and measurement of the size of breast cancer. Batch processing for 3D visualization and the measurement of breast tumors was helpful for diagnosis and surgical planning.