Getting a good look at a person's guts without using a scalpel isn't easy. Radiologists use computed tomography (CT) to capture thin-slice images of our insides, but then they have to envision how those 2D X-rays fit together. It's like looking at slices of bread and imagining the loaf.
But help is on the way from an unlikely source: Buzz Lightyear. Radiologist Richard Breiman, of the University of California, San Francisco is harnessing 3D graphics technology pioneered by Pixar, the studio behind Toy Story and a string of other CGI hits.
Called volume rendering, it can assemble those CT slices into images that are viewable from any angle. Breiman can even manipulate the picture, gamer style -- spin it around or animate it for, say, a flight through the bowel. (Bet you can't do that in Assassin's Creed 2.)
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