14.6 Three-Dimensional Image
Processing
Three-dimensional image processing can be performed using three different
approaches. The first approach involves performing 2-D image processing
operations on the individual optical sections of the image stack. This approach
does not take into account the 3-D nature of the data set and may be suboptimal
in certain situations. The second approach is to perform image processing using
the entire 3-D data set, treating the voxel (volume element) as the basic unit of
brightness in three dimensions. In this approach, all operations are performed
on cubic voxel arrays. Finally, the fused image of a stack can be processed by
2-D techniques. For most image processing techniques, the 2-D counterpart
can easily be extended ...