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Ch. Dräger:
"A ChainMail Algorithm for Direct Volume Deformation in Virtual Endoscopy Applications";
Supervisor: K. Bühler, A. Neubauer, E. Gröller; Institut für Computergraphik und Algorithmen, 2005.

Endoscopy is an integral part of medical practice although the procedure is often unpleasant for the patient. Virtual endoscopy is a diagnosis tool which visualizes 3D image data sets to show a virtual view of the patient similar to the images generated by a traditional endoscopy. A virtualendoscopysystemcalledSTEPSwasdevelopedattheVRVistosimulatetranssphenoidal endonasal pituitary adenoma surgery. This thesis describes a deformation engine extending the STEPS application to enhance the realism. The two main contributions are the development of the Divod ChainMail algorithm, an algorithm for direct volume deformation based on the Chain- Mail and Enhanced ChainMail algorithms, and the integration of the engine into the existing STEPS. We use a Constrained Particle System to directly model and manipulate the volume data instead of modeling objects extracted from the volume data. We further proposes a simple interface to ease integration and enforce reusability of the software components. This thesis describes our Divod ChainMail algorithm, the interface and integration details, and provides timing results. Finally, it offers a discussion of the presented methods pointing out possible improvements and further work.