Radiologist Kai-hung Fung makes beautiful and informative art from the CT (computed tomography) scans of his patients, digitally manipulating them to look more appealing. His image of the inside of our sinuses won the 2007 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. See this and some of his more recent works in our gallery
‘What lies behind our nose?’
This is the winning image of the 2007 .
The original CT scan was taken from a 33-year-old Chinese woman who came in to have her thyroid examined.
The 3D image is digitally reconstructed from many millimetre-thick 2D X-ray “slices” taken in the CT scanner. 182 slices are stacked together here, allowing us to look upward at her nasal passages from beneath her head.
The bones, soft tissue and fat have been removed from the image, leaving just the cast of the sinuses.
(Image: Kai-hung Fung)
‘Network’
This image looks directly down through the top of the patient’s head.
The complex network of arteries and veins in the brain can be seen in shades of dark blue and the skull base is shown in green in the background.
(Image: Kai-hung Fung)
‘Spoke wheel’
This is a CT scan of a human skull.
The red ring-like pattern is cancer of the thyroid which has become detached from the thyroid and deposited itself on the skull bone, shown as rainbow-coloured layers.
The yellow area shows a cut section at the top of the skull, which is due to the top part of the skull not being included in the CT scanning.
The cancer has caused the bones of the skull to expand.
Fung has used a post-production trick he developed, known as the “rainbow technique” to add coloured contour lines to this image. This enhances the 3D effect.
(Image: Kai-hung Fung)
‘Within one’s heart’
The human heart from a vantage point at the left lower chamber, peeping upwards through the columns of papillary muscles.
This angle allows us to see the oval-shaped valve that feeds the aorta (top left) from below. The oval mitral valve is directly to the right.
The septum, which separates the left and right chambers of the heart, is seen on the left side in shades of green.
This is a computer technique known as “virtual endoscopy” and is often used to examine areas where blood would obscure the view of a real endoscope.
(Image: Kai-hung Fung)
‘Nose from the inside’
This shows the inside of the nose. The left nostril is the dark area near the bottom of the centre.
The nasal septum is shown on the right side of the image, overlaid with radiating blue lines. These have been deliberately left semi-transparent to reveal the structures on the other side of the nose. The bones are shown in red.
(Image: Kai-hung Fung)
‘Sound track’
This is the inside of a human ear canal.
The two tiny bones hanging down the ear canal, shown in blue, help to transmit sound from the ear drum to the inner ear.
(Image: Kai-hung Fung)
