Apparatuses, methods and computer program products for scan plane geometry
definition in tomographic data acquisition via an interactive three-dimensional
(3-D) graphical operator interface. The apparatuses, methods and computer program
products are initially proposed for use in cardiac MRI, but have a much broader
area of application. The apparatuses and methods utilize 3-D computer graphics
aspect views of slice planes to show a new scan, represented as semi-transparent
uniformly-colored planes. Intersections of these planes with opaque texture-mapped
gray-level views of previously acquired images enable the orientation of a new
scan to be viewed in a much more intuitive fashion. Advantageously, the apparatuses
and methods of the present invention provide for more efficient elimination of
positional ambiguity that is often associated with conventional 2-D intersection
line views. In addition, any misregistration between localizer scans can be detected
immediately in the integrated 3-D display by misalignment of anatomy in the previously
acquires image planes.
