an der

Automated processing and visualization of vascular structures is a common task in medical imaging. Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP) and Curved Planar Reformation (CPR) are well established and robust methods for clinical use. In case of calcified vessel walls, occlu-sion prevents exploring the inside of the vessels when using MIP. CPR allows to cut a single vessel along its centerline and to visualize the lumen. Extending the idea of CPR, a novel automatic method for vessel visualization is proposed. It works with multiple vessel center-lines that do not necessarily need to be connected into a tree structure. Arbitrarily complex vascular structures are rendered in the volume as point sets and optionally, occlusion halos are created around them to enhance depth perception. Vessel centerlines are automatically extracted from a volumetric data-set after performing feature extraction in a scale-space. The user is provided with the ability to control the final image and he or she can visually select the desired centerlines with visual queries by stroking with the mouse. Furthermore, a com-bination with the recent Maximum Intensity Difference Accumulation (MIDA) visualization technique is presented, which has the advantages of Direct Volume Rendering (DVR) such a