Virtual medical imaging

超声（US）和磁共振成像（MRI）已成为诊断疾病不可或缺的临床工具，无需打开或照射身体。尽管如此，医生仍然很难解读所得到的图像，特别是当有复杂的结构、组织运动或血流时。医学成像的计算机模拟在US和MRI的发展和优化中发挥了重要作用，因为“虚拟患者”背后的真相是明确的。不幸的是，许多模拟仅限于简单的虚拟患者（由立方体，球体等组成），并且经常不同的研究人员会在不知不觉中重新发明相同的模拟工具。多年来，我和我的学生开发了基本的美国磁共振成像模拟工具，基于我们用于血管疾病研究的模拟血液流动的相同技术。在本提案中，我描述了我们现在将如何扩展这些以更有效和现实地模拟医学成像过程。对我们来说，重要的设计标准将是：(i)这些工具在解剖学上真实的、三维的虚拟患者上操作，因此从中得出的结论在临床应用时更有可能起作用；（ii）它们可以通过驱动Linux操作系统成功的开源软件许可，免费提供给研究社区。使这些工具广泛使用将使研究人员能够专注于解决问题，而不必首先因创建自己的模拟器而分心。当然，最终，这些模拟器将在提高医学成像质量，从而提高患者的诊断和治疗方面发挥重要作用。

Ultrasound (US) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have become indispensable clinical tools for diagnosing diseases without having to open up or irradiate the body.  Still, it is often difficult for doctors to interpret the resulting images, especially when there are complex structures, tissue motion or blood flow.Computer simulations of medical imaging have played an important role in the development and optimization of US and MRI, because the truth behind a "virtual patient" is well-defined.  Unfortunately, many simulations are restricted to simple virtual patients (composed of cubes, spheres, etc.), and often different researchers will unknowingly reinvent the same simulation tools.Over the years my students and I have developed rudimentary US and MRI simulation tools, based on the same techniques we use to simulate blood flow for our research into vascular disease. In this proposal, I describe how we will now extend these to simulate medical imaging processes more efficiently and realistically.Important design criteria for us will be: (i) that these tools operate on anatomically realistic, three-dimensional virtual patients, so that conclusions drawn from them are more likely to work when applied in the clinic; and (ii) that they be made freely available to the research community through the same kind of open source software licenses that have driven the success of the Linux operating system.Making these tools widely available will allow researchers to focus on solving problems without having to be distracted by creating their own simulators first.  Ultimately, of course, these simulators will play an important role in improving the quality of medical imaging, and hence the diagnosis and treatment of patients.