AHA conform visualization of conventionally acquired cardiac CT data using the toolkits itk and vtk

Several modalities like CT, MRI, or U/S are used for the imaging of the myocardium and the adjacent cavity. The American Heart Association (AHA) has published recommenda- tions for the heart's orientation in cross-sectional slices for a better comparability of data from different imaging modalities. We present and compare techniques for the generation of such conform slices from conventionally acquired cardiac CT data sets by employing the toolkits vtk and itk for visualization as well as image processing purposes.