Materialise Mimics is an image processing software for 3D design and modeling, developed by

Materialise NV Materialise NV, headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, is a company in the 3D printing / additive manufacturing sector. History 1990s Materialise was founded in June 1990 by Wilfried Vancraen and his wife Hilde Ingelaere as a Rapid Prototyping ...

, a Belgian company specialized in

additive manufacturing 3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer co ...

software and technology for medical, dental and additive manufacturing industries. Materialise Mimics is used to create 3D surface models from stacks of 2D image data. These 3D models can then be used for a variety of engineering applications. Mimics is an acronym for Materialise Interactive Medical Image Control System. It is developed in an

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

environment with CE and FDA 510k premarket clearance. Materialise Mimics is commercially available as part of the Materialise Mimics Innovation Suite, which also contains Materialise 3-matic, a design and meshing software for anatomical data. The current version is 24.0(released in 2021), it supports

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

Vista Vista usually refers to a distant view. Vista may also refer to: Software *Windows Vista, the line of Microsoft Windows client operating systems released in 2006 and 2007 *VistA, (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) ...

and XP in x64.

Process

Materialise Mimics calculates surface 3D models from stacked image data such as Computed Tomography (CT), Micro CT, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI),

Confocal Microscopy Confocal microscopy, most frequently confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) or laser confocal scanning microscopy (LCSM), is an optical imaging technique for increasing optical resolution and contrast of a micrograph by means of using a sp ...

X-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...

and

Ultrasound Ultrasound is sound waves with frequency, frequencies higher than the upper audible limit of human hearing range, hearing. Ultrasound is not different from "normal" (audible) sound in its physical properties, except that humans cannot hea ...

, through image segmentation. The ROI, selected in the segmentation process is converted to a 3D surface model using an adapted

marching cubes Marching cubes is a computer graphics algorithm, published in the 1987 SIGGRAPH proceedings by Lorensen and Cline, for extracting a polygonal mesh of an isosurface from a three-dimensional discrete scalar field (the elements of which are sometime ...

algorithm that takes the partial volume effect into account, leading to very accurate 3D models.Jamali AA et al. ''Linear and angular measurements of computer-generated models: are they accurate, valid and reliable?'' Computer Aided Surgery 2007, 12(5), p278-285. The 3D files are represented in the

STL STL may refer to: Communications * Standard telegraph level *Studio/transmitter link International law *Special Tribunal for Lebanon The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), also referred to as the Lebanon Tribunal or the Hariri Tribunal, is a ...

format.

Uploading Data

DICOM Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) is the standard for the communication and management of medical imaging information and related data. DICOM is most commonly used for storing and transmitting medical images enabling the integ ...

data from CT or MRI images can be uploaded into Materialise Mimics in order to begin th
segmentation
process. From this data, 3 different views are present: the coronal, axial, and sagittal views. Another window is present to display 3D objects.

Mask Creation

The "New Mask" tool can be used to highlight specific anatomy from the DICOM data.

Printing Models

Models can be sent to 3D printers in the form of STLs. 3d vertebrae surface meshes

Gallery

Image:Seg image wiki-project.GIF, Image import from CT (DICOM) Image:Seg masks wiki-project.GIF, Image segmentation Image:3d_model_of_lungs_airways_ribs.jpg, 3D model

References

External links

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User community
{{Image Processing Software Biomedical engineering Windows graphics-related software 3D graphics software Computer-aided design software