Colon Straightening Based on a Gravity Field Model

In this paper we present a colon straightening method based on a gravity field model. The colon is considered as an isotropic elastic solid geometry. Nonlinear finite element method is adopted to simulate the colon deformation process under the gravity in the natural world. Thin-plate spline based kernel transform is used to interpolate among the nodes of the finite elements. Experiments with both simulation models and a CT dataset are designed. The results show the proposed method is more effective compared with other existing straightening methods in the regions of the colon with high curvature or asymmetrical structure.