Real-time volume rendered MRI for interventional guidance.

Volume renderings from magnetic resonance imaging data can be created and displayed in real-time with user interactivity. This can provide continuous 3D feedback to assist in guiding an interventional procedure. A system is presented which can produce real-time volume renderings from 2D multi-slice or 3D MR pulse sequences. Imaging frame rates up to 30 per second have been demonstrated with a latency of approximately one-third of a second, depending on the image matrix size. Several interactive capabilities have been implemented to enhance visualization such as cut planes, individual channel scaling and color highlighting, view sharing, saturation preparation, complex subtraction, gating control, and choice of alpha blending or MIP rendering. The system is described and some interventional application examples are shown. To view movies of some of the examples, enter the following address into a web browser: http://nhlbi.nih.gov/labs/papers/lce/guttman/rtvolmri/index/htm.