| abstract |
System and methods of displaying one or more vessels, particularly blood vessels and more particularly coronary arteries, are disclosed. Each of the one or more vessels is associated with an outline of a tube generated from a set of image data. For a viewing point, a depth image is calculated by projecting a plurality of rays from the viewing point and, for each of the plurality of rays, determining distance between the viewing point and the point of intersection of ray and any of the tubes. The surrounding area of the one or more vessels within a bounding viewing box is extracted, interpolated and rendered, and the depth image of the surrounding area is calculated. Then, an image of the one or more vessels and their background information concerning data surroundings the vessels generated based on the depth image is displayed. |