Osirix Imaging - Articles, Tutorials & Resources for Medical Illustrators

The region growing tool allows you to isolate structures out of a study to visualize it in 3D. A contrast enhanced structure is ideal to use with the region growing tool because of its density difference. Also, the lungs can easily be separated from other tissues with this tool.

To create a QuickTime movie of a beating heart in OsiriX, you just need a 4D cardiac CT dataset.

1. Download a study from the DICOM sample image sets . For this tutorial, I used MAGIX, a 4D cardiac CT scan of a heart.

The Shading Menu is a little feature, semi-hidden on the main toolbar. I know that I was completely ignorant of this feature until recently. It isn’t going to completely revolutionize the way OsiriX renders anything, but it does add just a bit of a punch to your renders.

The utilization of MRI technology to view the equine hoof is relatively new to the equine veterinary field and so the use of this technology to create visuals is also in its infancy. The goal of my research at the University of Illinois at Chicago was to examine the different methods of rendering with the use of MRI data of the horse as the basis for producing illustrations and interactive visualizations with commercially available visualizing programs. Producing inter-actives and illustrations with actual data from the living equine is a significant step in veterinary education, as much of the equine has not been visualized in this way.

In OsiriX, a fly through is a movie sequence. You have the control of selecting specific key frames from a 3D reconstruction by moving, rotating and zooming in and out of the 3D volume render, surface render, MIP or endoscopy. OsiriX will interpolate or “tween” the key frames to create a smooth movie sequence.

There are three pull down menus that you may or may not have noticed before. The one that we are currently interested in is the CLUT - color look up table. While there are numerous presets that can be cycled through at your leisure, we are going to concentrate on the 16-bit CLUT Editor. All of the other presets are in an 8-bit style, and the 16-bit color selection allows for a little more control over the transparency and color selections within your data set.

When did you first start using OsiriX?

I most likely started using Osirix in late 2006, but really only dabbling in it.

Who introduced you to it?

That would be fellow medical illustrator, Andrew Swift. Andrew and I have chatted back and forth via email showing sample projects we’re working on. Some of his Osirix samples simply blew me away. From there, I went to the Osirix web site, watched the tutorial videos, downloaded the software, joined the Osirix Yahoo Group and began tinkering with it during my off time.

I believe I first stumbled across OsiriX on the web in ‘04 or ‘05 not long after it first came out. I didn’t do much with it until a year or so later when I attended a demonstration of OsiriX at RSNA in Chicago. After learning a little about OsiriX’s 3D visualization tools, and having access to a few datasets, I recognized that…

For those working in 3D modeling and animation, the 3D Surface Rendering tool is appropriate. However, if you are working in a 2D program such as Photoshop or Illustrator, the 3D Volume Rendering tool allows you to navigate through the image in OsiriX to visualize the anatomical structures in relation to each other.

From a 3D Volume Render, you can export a QuickTime VR from a study so that…

Looking at the DICOM sample image sets from the OsiriX website, it was difficult for me to choose which type of scans to use for reference, and once chosen, to decide which series in the study to use. In addition, I was not familiar with the radiology terms used to describe the datasets.

What is the Visible Human Project?

Complete male and female cadaver datasets in MRI, CT, and color photo image formats.

How do I access the data?

You must complete a license agreement with…

It is possible to take DICOM data from OsiriX to create a 3D surface rendering, and import it in to 3DS Max. I used FELIX for this tutorial, but other studies from the DICOM Sample Image sets can be used.

Osiriximaging.com was created for my project research for the requirements of my Master of Science degree in Biomedical Visualization at the University of Illinois at Chicago. John Daugherty, CMI, Scott Dixon and Scott Barrows, CMI, FAMI, served as my project research committee members.