Application of Visualization Toolkit in three-dimensional reconstruction for medical images

Visualization of medical images has become an important method for the basic medical research as well as clinical diagnosis and treatment. Construction of the highly sophisticated three-dimensional (3D) models of the human body by computers has become an essential foundation for current medical research and disease treatment methods. Visualization Toolkit (VTK) is a kind of famous software in scientific visualization fields. It is convenient and efficient for programming. This paper implements three typical algorithms, Contour-connecting, Marching Cubes and Ray-casting, of medical image 3D visualization using VTK with VC++. Results show that VTK is a powerful tool with many advantages, such as simple operation, fast, and good interaction ability and can be widely used in 3D reconstruction of medical images.