Osirix Imaging - Articles, Tutorials & Resources for Medical Illustrators

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 you can manipulate and rotate the image in 3D outside of OsiriX. Then, with QuickTime Pro, you can render out the image in the exact view that you may need for an illustration.

Creating a QuickTime VR can take quite some time to render, so if you know exactly which view you want to reference in your illustration, you can simply export a single TIFF file directly from OsiriX.

1. Download a study from the DICOM sample image sets . For this tutorial, I used COLONIX, a CT scan of the abdomen.

image via http://pubimage.hcuge.ch:8080/

2. Copy the study to your desktop. Open the folder to unzip it.

3. To import the study into OsiriX, click the unzipped folder from your desktop and drag to the Local DICOM database window. You can also click the Import button.

4. To open the study, select it from the Local DICOM database window and press enter. Or select it and click on the 2D-3D Viewer button.

5. The study opens in the 2D-3D Viewer.

6. Click on the 2D/3D viewer button pull down and select 3D volume rendering.

7. It took about 2 minutes to create the 3D volume render on my MacBook Pro (core 2 duo, 2GB RAM).

8. For this particular study, I changed the WW/WL (WW = window width or contrast) (WL = window level or brightness) to the preset contrast and intensity for a CT– Abdomen.

9. To edit the colors of the image, click on CLUT and select 16-bit CLUT (color look up table) editor.

10. The 16-bit CLUT editor will display a histogram of the image.

11. I adjusted the image to show the colon. A tutorial on the 16-bit CLUT editor can be found here .

12. Select File – Export – Export to QuickTime VR.

If you are familiar with a NLE (non linear editing) program like Adobe Premier Pro, you can render out structures separately from OsiriX and combine the QuickTime movies in to a single clip. The advantage of this is a faster render time when you export out of OsiriX.

13. You can adjust the type, quality and size of the QuickTime VR to meet the needs of your project.

14. Save the QuickTime VR as a .mov file and change the frame rate if desired. I exported the QuickTime VR at 15 images per second. The maximum frame rate is 30 images per second.

15. You can also export single images directly from OsiriX. I suggest exporting the image as a lossless file like a TIFF instead of a JPEG. Select File – Export – Export to TIFF.

Esther Pulley is a recent graduate of the Biomedical Visualization program at the University of Illinois at Chicago.