Comparative Analysis of Volume Rendering Techniques on Craniofacial CT Images

In the virtual surgical planning for orthognathic surgery, 3D visualization of facial bone surface is required. In this paper, the 3D facial bone surface model of craniofacial areas is reconstructed from volumetric 2D computed tomography (CT) slices which are in digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) format. These slices are mapped to the z coordinate space and a mesh surface is visualized using marching cube and ray casting visualization algorithms. Comparative analysis of marching cube and ray casting volume rendering algorithms is done with memory and time quality metric, to analyze which method is best for further volumetric analysis in virtual surgical planning of orthognathic surgery.