ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a system which automatically produces a three-dimensional image of the heart of a patient by using its two-dimensional representation, i.e., tomograms. It also describes hardware implementation of a three-dimensional display system using a new method, i.e., overlaid display with different gray levels according to its depth. In the field of cardiology, digital image processing technique is a powerful tool for analysis of cardiological data. The digital image processing facilitates reconstruction of three-dimensional structure of physical measurements of various parameters, e.g., the heart volume. The serial tomograms obtained by tomograph are digitized by the image input device. The digitized image is then stored in the floppy disk and can be read out at any time. It is useful to have a three-dimensional display device for many applications. Plott, et al. developed a three-dimensional system, which produces rotated two-dimensional images and presents these images separately to the left and right eyes producing a three-dimensional display.
