7/14/12

Segmenting the Canine Skull

Despite not actually heard back from anyone official on the project idea, I decided to do some segmenting.  Yes, this is what I do for fun on a Saturday night.

The bane of my segmenting existence - ethmoid type bones, and turbinates
I am not looking forward to the canine nasal cavity.  There are a lot of delicate structures in there, that are very, very hard to segment out in Amira.

Canine skull, from an awesome person on deviant art
I have started on other, potentially easily to identify bones on the skull.  However, I've already run into issues there.  The scan I am using, while beautiful, doesn't have the clearest suture lines.  I'm switching back and forth between the three views (sagittal, coronal, and axial) and often viewing the scan side by side with the projected 3D model.  This allows me to see my changes in real time, so I can compare with reference texts and photos.


Amira 3D point cloud

Trying to identify the jugal bone
And the bones of the canine skull are different than those of a human.  So, while the experience I gained segmenting out many, many skulls at my previous job is helpful here, I am struggling somewhat with where suture lines are supposed to be.  I would love to get my hands on an actual skull.  Which is an idea to run by my vet expert....

EDIT: 4 hours later, I'm starting to feel some concern.  I chose what I thought would be 'easy' bones to start off with, but... it has been around 3-4 hours of work and I'm just now finishing them up.  And I'm fairly certain that the lacrimal bone is in there somewhere.  I'm hoping that I just misjudged what would be less difficult, and not that the rest of the skull will be even more complex.  I definitely need a physical canine skull.  Photo references are all well and good, but an actual skull would be much more useful.

Zygomatic bones in red.  (It would be helpful if all of my references agreed on the bone names.) 
 


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