Current Clinical Concerns in CT: Results : 3D Rendering

Editing

1. At our hospital, after we perform a CT Angio (Siemens 16), the techs have to sit and cut out all anatomy such as soft tissue and bone, leaving only the spinning artery in space. This is very time consuming and limits how many we can do a day, plus puts a lot of responsibility on the techs shoulders to leave in all correct vessels. How can we convince our Radiologists they don't need all this, or do you think this is standard procedure?

2. Hello! What is the easiest way to remove unwanted structures when using 3D rendering techniques for CT examination? I'm working with a Siemens 4-Slice. When do you use "region growing" and "morphological operations"?

3. The images I get from Inspace are much nicer than from the 3D card on our Sensation 16. I need better tools or help in editing, particularly bone and calcified plaque. It would be extremely helpful if one could do slab editing, i.e., apply a slab and then have the VOI punch tool only apply to the selected slab. Our orthopedists would like for me to be able to remove the femoral heads in models of acetabular fractures, and I don't see how else to do it. Also, CTA runoffs are attracting a lot of interest, but everyone wants the bones and plaque out of the model, same on carotids. I am mostly using MIPs on the 3D card for this now, but would like to accomplish the same in Inspace (especially with those series of more than 1000 images). We recently had a case of neck trauma with a focal vertebral occlusion at C1/2, which was clear on the axials, but I couldn't find a nice MIP or Volume Rendered way to demonstrate it because of the proximity of the vertebral to the bone and the curved path of the vert at that point.