Depth Perception Enhancement in 2D/3D Vascular Image Fusion

The 2D/3D image fusion involves superimposing vascular models onto X-ray images, but the lack of depth information in fused images greatly affects the perception of complex vascular structures. In this paper, we investigate a visualization technique that enables depth perception enhancement of complex vascular structures in fused images. A distance detection-based contour rendering technique is proposed to enhance the shape and local spatial perception of vascular visualization. Furthermore, by combining the pseudo chromadepth and simulation of perspective projection techniques, depth information is used to encode the vascular contour to improve spatial perception of the vascular structures in fused images. The proposed visualization technique is evaluated on both phantom and clinical datasets. The distance detection-based contour rendering provides 100% correctness in the determination of the aneurysm position in X-ray images. Furthermore, results from a questionnaire involving 16 participants and a Likert scale test show a positive result of 4.81±0.47, thereby demonstrating that our proposed depth perception enhancement technique can effectively and efficiently enhance the visual visualization of complex vascular structures in fused images.