Application of the cross sectional diagnostic imaging methods (CT and MR) in anatomical 3D reconstructions Part 2. Soft tissue and bone reconstruction. CT and MR fusion modeling of the equine stifle joint

SUMMARY Background: Computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MR) became important diagnostic tools in the veterinary practice in the past decades. Data gained with those scanning methods can be used for 3D displaying of different organs, organ systems and body regions as well. There are numerous reconstructional soft-wares to create high detailed and precise 3D anatomical models of the target area, based on those datasets.objectives: The authors present their own results about the 3D reconstruction of the bony and soft tissues of the equine stifle joint, based on image fusion of CT and MR data.Material and Methods: A Siemens Definition Flash Dual Source 2x128 slices CT and a Simens Avanto 1.5T MR scanner was used to scan the stifle joint of an 8 years old mare horse. The resulting DICOM data were reconstructed with the 3DSlicer software using manual, semi-automatic and automatic segmentations. First the bony structures of the stifle were reconstructed from the CT dataset. The soft tissues of the stifle joint: cavities of the femoropatellar, medial femorotibial, lateral femorotibial, subextensory recess of the lateral femorotibial joints, the menisci, and the different ligaments were reconstructed after the image fusion of the MR data with the 3D bony model from created from the CT.Results and discussion: In the second part of this article series the authors give a short review about the technical details of the MR imaging method, the CT and MR anatomy of the equine stifle and the procedure how they created the 3D model. The authors created 3D models from the bones of the equine stifle from the CT data set. In the second step they made an image fusion with the MR data of the same stifle joint. The methods used for these reconstructions can be used for other organs, organ systems or body regions as well but require high contrast difference between the different anatomical structures or tissues. If such contrast deviations are not present naturally, contrast enhancement for the scanning procedures (in vivo contrast media administration, post mortem contrast enhancement methods) could be used