Blue Sky Plan Manual

A 3D visualization can be cropped with the Surface Culling function. In "Surfaces" mode, each CT surface is cropped independently of the others. The first non-deletable surface shares its cropping area with the other visualization modes (Shaded Bones, MIP, X-Ray, etc.). Cropping serves to: remove noise, remove superfluous anatomy, isolate anatomy.

The cropping tools are in the lower part of the "Surfaces" panel. It is possible to crop data with the "Cut" button, to delete a previously performed crop with the "Clear" button, and to isolate the selected anatomic portion. It is also possible to invert the current cropping. After the user clicks the "Cut" button, the application switches to drawing mode. At this point, by clicking on the left mouse button in the 3D window and dragging the cursor, it is possible to draw an area which is cut out of the selected surface after when the mouse button is released. Drawing can also be invoked at any point by pressing the "Shift" key and holding it down during the whole drawing period. If we want to isolate a particular part of the anatomy, we must first ensure that it is not connected to any other parts, using the cropping function described above. We can isolate anatomy in this way with the "Isolate" button and by clicking on it in the 3D window. All parts of the anatomy are then removed except for the selected part. As soon as we have a cropped part of the anatomy that we want to display, it is possible to invert the cropping with the Invert check box. Any cropping actions can be reversed using the "Undo" function.