Rendering Novel Views of MRI Using 3D Gaussian Splatting

2026-06-24

AI Summary

This study addresses the limitations in spinal canal stenosis grading caused by sparse, anisotropic MRI scans and misalignment between imaging planes and target anatomical structures. To overcome these challenges, the authors propose a novel approach that introduces 3D Gaussian Splatting into medical image resampling, constructing a continuous volumetric representation from sparse MRI data. By employing an anatomy-aligned planar sampling strategy, the method generates diagnostic-optimized views tailored to spinal canal assessment. Compared to conventional inverse-distance-weighted interpolation, this technique significantly improves grading accuracy across all types of spinal canal stenosis, thereby surpassing the constraints of existing resampling methodologies.

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to improve radiological gradings measured on MRIs of spines, by resampling scans so that the new view planes are better aligned with the target anatomy than the original sparse images. To this end, we adapt 3D Gaussian Splatting to form a volumetric reconstruction starting from sparse anisotropic MRIs, and imaging planes aligned with the anatomy relevant for clinical evaluation are then sampled and rendered. The novel view plane is optimal for diagnostic radiological grading of the target anatomy, whereas the original MRI is not. The resampled scans are then used to predict ordinal severity grades of localised stenosis conditions in spinal MRIs. We compare our method against Voxel Interpolation resampling, which takes the average of inverse-distance weighted nearest neighbour intensities for each target coordinate. Experiments show that across all stenosis conditions, resampled scans using Gaussian Splatting produce more accurate stenosis gradings compared to the raw scans which do not include the complete anatomy in-plane, as well as images resampled using Voxel Interpolation.

Problem

• MRI resampling
• novel view synthesis
• radiological grading
• spinal stenosis
• anisotropic imaging

Innovation

• 3D Gaussian Splatting
• MRI resampling
• anatomical alignment
• spinal stenosis grading
• volumetric reconstruction