In this tutorial, I will explain how to turn your DICOM data pulled from your CT-SCAN into a 3d printable file.
Go to https://www.slicer.org/ download the software and install it.
Open it and click on import DICOM files, search the directory of your DICOM files and click on import.
Click on show DICOM database, click on your name and finally double click on the slices you are interested in, here sinus. The slices will load.
Now click on the scrolling menu and choose volume rendering.
Click on display ROI, white lines will appear.
You can click on the white dot next to Volume, your head will appear in 3d. But it is optional.
You also can select a preset, here I choose lung, like that you can see inside the nasal cavity.
Now crop the desired zone using the color dot.
When you are happy with your cropped zone click on the little magnifying glass, then write crop, click on crop volume and finally switch to module. After that click on the apply button. Wait a moment it can take a while.
Now return to the Volume rendering worshop and click on display ROI in order to hide white lines
Once it's done, click again on the little magnifying glass and write editor, then click on switch to module.
A little window will appear, click OK.
Click on the threshold effect button.
The slices will turn green, now you need to adjust the left cursor in order to paint all your soft tissues green.
I found that generally the good numbers are between -200 and -400 but it may depend on CT-SCAN.
Finally, click ok the apply button.
It's almost over, we've done the biggest part.
Now click on data in the menu.
Right-click on your "name files" cropped-label and click on Convert labelmap to segmentation mode.
A line tissue will appear, again right-click on it and Export visible segment to models.
Wait a moment, it can take a while, a line cropped-label-segmentation-models will appear and also your 3d model on the right window.
Click on file, then save or ctrl + s.
In the window, uncheck all boxes except tissue.
Click on Poly data (.vtk) and choose .STL.
Click on change directory for selected files and choose a directory you want to save the 3d model file.
Finally click on save and voila, well done !
This .STL file is a 3d file that can be used to 3d print the model directly, but as you can imagine it is not useful to 3d print the model in this state, we will see nothing. We need to see inside the nasal cavity.
That is why in the next tutorial I will explain how to cut the model into slices in order to see inside. The slices will be stackable.
Thank you so much for the tutorial!
Would love an update, because the current version of the Slicer software seems to be v5.0.2 and some stuff has changed since v4.11.