"Alf Peake" <alf### [at] peake42freeservecouk> wrote:
>
> I've had regular CT, MRI and PET scans. How large are the original MRI
> files? I've asked for copies ( to play with in Povray of course :) but
> the request always seems to get lost in red-tape. I was told
> resolution is about 1mm, and was guessing I could convert and clean
> the data to something useful.

It varies with the imaging protocol used, but the one I posted was from a
16bit 512x512x232 voxel dataset, which translates to voxel dimensions of
<0.39,0.39,0.9> (mm) for the field of view that was used in the scan. That
(uncompressed) image series takes about 180MB.

There are many free medical visualization/processing tools available on the
internet (e.g. AFNI, Dicom Toolkit, MRIcro ... ) you could use for
conversion and processing.  There could be a bit of a learning curve in
using them, as medical images use special formats (mainly DICOM) and
terminology.  The imaging methods are a whole different issue, and one has
to at least take a look at a radiology tutorial to understand what to
expect to see in different images.

Now, cleaning up the data isn't too difficult, and one could in principle do
it for the separate grayscale slices with a common image editor and then
convert the slices to a .df3.  More advanced processing, like segmenting
out different subvolumes (gray brain matter, veins) is a lot harder, even
with tools specifically designed for the purpose.  If you see a gorgeous 3D
rendering of a MRI dataset showing all the different organs with clean
color coding, you can be quite certain someone's spend a good few hours
processing the data to a workable condition!

To get your own images, you simply have to find the nerd of the place you're
being imaged at :)  As it is easier said than done, I'll post at least the
..df3 and possibly a set of grayscale images next week when I get back to
faster connections.

--
jussi.kantola

Post a reply to this message