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.
1. Download felix from the DICOM Sample Image sets and load FELIX into your database.
image via http://pubimage.hcuge.ch:8080/
2. There are four series in this study.
shared_echo_cor_bh_SUB_MIP_COR
cemra_highres
sub_mra
MIP thin cor
Click on CEMRA_HIGHRES and press enter to open up the series.
I used CEMRA_HIGHRES, (contrast enhanced magnetic resonance angiography) a MR scan of a cerebral aneurysm, because it had the best render out of the 4 series.
3. Click on the 2D/3D viewer button pull down and select 3D surface rendering
4. A dialog box will come up. I set the quality to the highest levels possible. Set the resolution to high, Decimate - Resolution to 1, Smooth - Iterations to 100, and click OK.
5. The 3D surface rendering is not the best quality because it is from a MRI dataset and not a CT dataset.
6. Click on the Export 3D-SR button pulldown (to export series in a 3D file format) and select Export as Wavefront (.obj). Name and save the .obj file.
7. Open up 3DS Max and select File - Import..
8. In the Select File to Import dialog box, change Files of type to WaveFront Object *.OBJ; select and open the 3D file.
9. In the OBJ Importer dialog box, you can choose to import single objects or multiple objects, depending on your project. Material options are not applicable in this case.
10. 3D surface rendering is imported into 3DS Max
11. View from the perspective window
12. Because the mesh of the imported object is too dense to work with as a model, the 3D surface rendering from OsiriX can serve as a guide to create a new object in 3DS Max.
Esther Pulley is a recent graduate of the Biomedical Visualization program at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
hey there - esther. i’ve tried to do what you suggest above - a few times now… and thanks a million for the tutorial!
unfortunately, everytime i do an export from osirix v.3.3.2 on OSX 10.5, i only get a .mtl file - not an obj file as one might expect from the export step.
have you ever seen this problem? perhaps i’m doing something wrong?