Development of three-dimensional imaging of the musculoskeletal system and its diagnostic capability

Since 1987 we have studied osseous surface reconstructed three-dimensionally (3-D) from CT images with the cooperation from Hitachi Medico Co., Ltd. From these studies we have developed the following method for various clinical use. The method of this 3-DCT system could treat rather noisy images scanned with low radiation exposure because of the high contrast ratio (CT number) between bones and soft tissues, in the CT images. In addition, the 3-D calculation treated only the extracted data instead of all the CT images data, and the high speed processor was used in our system. These were effective to reduce the processing time. Furthermore, the system provided a natural stereoscopic view using a mixture shading method. Subsequently, this 3-DCT system was applied to clinical cases to examine its diagnostic capability. These results indicate that the 3-DCT system is useful in evaluating pathological conditions of bones and joints. (author)