Min Xie401 Grove Ave, Metuchen, NJ 08840

7242401, Jul 10, 2007

Jun 22, 2005

11/158879

Lining Yang - East Windsor NJ, US
Min Xie - Plainsboro NJ, US

Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc. - Malvern PA

G06T 15/00

345420, 345426

A method of propagating a ray through an image includes providing a digitized volumetric image comprising a plurality of intensities corresponding to a domain of voxels in a 3-dimensional space, providing a reduced path octree structure of said volumetric image, said reduced path octree comprising a plurality of first level nodes, wherein each first level node contains a plurality of said voxels, initializing a ray inside said volumetric image, and visiting each first level node along said ray, wherein if said first level node is non-empty, visiting each voxel contained within each first level node.

7317825, Jan 8, 2008

Jul 7, 2005

11/176532

Lining Yang - East Windsor NJ, US
Min Xie - Plainsboro NJ, US

Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc. - Malvern PA

G06K 9/00

382154, 345420, 345424, 345426

A computer-implemented method for intensity projection includes providing volume data, determining an estimated threshold for determining a maximum/minimum intensity value in the volume data from temporal coherence and spatial coherence information, performing the second pass for determining an actual maximum/minimum value along the new ray, wherein the second pass uses the estimated threshold as an initial threshold, and updating the buffer with a new location value where the actual maximum/minimum value for the next frame was determined.

7355598, Apr 8, 2008

Jun 22, 2005

11/159004

Lining Yang - East Windsor NJ, US
Min Xie - Plainsboro NJ, US

Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc. - Malvern PA

G06T 17/00

345420, 345422, 345424, 345426, 345440, 345503, 382128, 382274

A method for rendering a volumetric image includes providing a digitized volumetric image comprising a plurality of intensities corresponding to a domain of points in a 3-dimensional space, casting a ray through said volumetric image for a first pass to determine a threshold intensity for said ray, casting said ray through said volumetric image for a second pass, and sampling only those points whose intensity value is selected by said threshold intensity to determine a rendering value for said ray, wherein said rendering value is associated with a pixel from which said ray was cast.

7777742, Aug 17, 2010

Jan 16, 2007

11/623344

Daqing Xue - Plainsboro NJ, US
Min Xie - Plainsboro NJ, US

Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc. - Malvern PA

G06T 15/00

345424, 345428, 345440, 707791, 707797, 707798

A method and system of volume deformation, including accessing a tree structure for a set of deformation maps. The tree structure is traversed for each voxel in an original volume and each voxel is transformed according to each deformation map corresponding to a node of the tree structure until the entire original volume is deformed into reference volume space. Also, a method and system of generating an ordered map tree structure, including identifying a root node of a bounding box, the bounding box being a union of the root node's descendants. Child nodes are identified for each node, the child nodes being ordered so that a left child is applied before a corresponding right child, wherein each child node contains a deformation map and a corresponding bounding box. Each path originating from the root node corresponds to a complete deformation map sequence, and when a portion of two deformation maps overlap, the deformation map having a lower priority is a child of the deformation map having a higher priority.

7903113, Mar 8, 2011

Jun 29, 2007

11/771329

Smita Krishnan - Yardley PA, US
Robert Schneider - Roβtal, DE
Lining Yang - East Windsor NJ, US
Min Xie - Plainsboro NJ, US

Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc. - Malvern PA
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft - Munich

G06T 15/00

345424, 345419, 345420, 345422, 345428

A system and method for rendering an MIP image that has reduced high frequency component loss and reduced chessboard artifacts. The method includes accessing volumetric data, having random noise. Rays are shot, or cast, through the volumetric data, onto a voxel grid, which has grid points. Sampling data along each ray is performed to obtain selected sample data points on the ray and a distance from a selected point to a nearest grid point is determined. A voxel intensity value is accessed at each selected point, as a function of the position of the selected point relative to the nearest grid point. The difference between the voxel intensity at each selected point is minimized an image is rendered from the volumetric data as a function of the minimizing step. Multiple methods may be used to minimize the difference between the voxel intensity at each selected point. These include for example 1.

7957601, Jun 7, 2011

Apr 18, 2007

11/788005

Qiang Cheng - Plainsboro NJ, US
Michael Pisot - Erlangen, DE
Min Xie - Plainsboro NJ, US

Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc. - Malvern PA
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft - Munich

G06K 9/36
G06K 9/00

382232, 382128

A system and method for rendering images, and performing operations such as windowing and leveling, when the parameters of a client appliance are known and rendering images when the parameters of a client appliance are unknown. The invention also considers the rendering from the client appliance perspective and the server appliance perspective.

7965879, Jun 21, 2011

Feb 29, 2008

12/040244

Smita Krishnan - Yardley PA, US
Min Xie - Plainsboro NJ, US

Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc. - Malvern PA

G06K 9/00

382128, 382131, 382132

A method for efficiently rendering a chessboard artifact free Maximum intensity projection (MIP) image is disclosed is disclosed. MIP is a widely used volumetric rendering technology in medical diagnostic imaging. When a volume dataset containing wideband noise is rendered using MIP, the resultant MIP image can show chessboard or stripe like artifacts. A method is disclosed for automatically detecting stripe artifacts present in the MIP rendered images and to determine whether suitable mitigation algorithms need to be applied during rendering. This automatic detection method eliminates the need for human review of images to determine whether mitigation is required, and thus speeds the overall process.

8049752, Nov 1, 2011

Apr 18, 2007

11/787951

Lining Yang - East Windsor NJ, US
Udeepta D. Bordoloi - Milpitas CA, US
Min Xie - Plainsboro NJ, US

Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc. - Malvern PA

G06T 17/00
G06T 15/50
G09G 5/00
G09G 5/02

345424, 345420, 345426, 345428, 345592, 345629

A system and method of determining a sampling rate for rendering a volumetric image, the method includes determining a regional variation value representing regional data, color, and/or alpha variation. An accumulated opacity value is determined that represents opacity accumulated over a ray in the image, and a regional opacity value is determined that represents regional opacity. A quality setting is accessed that represents a default image quality, and the sampling rate is adjusted as a function of the regional variation value, the accumulated opacity value, the regional opacity value, and the quality setting. The regional variation value may be determined by iteratively generating a maximum regional variation table during pre-processing, quantizing the maximum regional variation table where the transfer function is defined based on a histogram of the volumetric image, and computing the regional variation value using the maximum regional variation table. Also disclosed are methods to calculate the accumulated opacity value, and the regional opacity value, as well as systems and methods of rendering a volumetric image by using the sampling rate.