Virtual endoscopy for cardio vascular exploration

With the recent introduction of multi-slice CT which acquire four image slices at the same time (which will increase to 16 image slices in the near future) the possible size of the generated image stack has increased tremendously. Traditional cine mode explorations of the image stack are rendered impractical by the sheer quantity of possible 1000 image slices of the resolution of 512 512 pixels. In this paper, we discuss the use of VIVENDI, a virtual endoscopy system applied for the three-dimensional exploration of cardio vascular structures. In particular stenoses of the coronary arteries can be visualized, if depicted by the scan.