Supplementary Material for: The Visible Ear: A Digital Image Library of the Temporal Bone

High-fidelity computer-based modeling, simulation and visualization systems for the study of temporal bone anatomy and training for middle ear surgery are based on a sequence of digital anatomical images, which must cover a large tissue volume and yet display details in high resolution and with high fidelity. However, the use of existing image libraries by independent developers of virtual models of the ear is limited by copyright protection and low image resolution. A fresh frozen human temporal bone was CT-scanned and serially sectioned at 25 µm and digital images of the block surface were recorded at 50- to 100-µm increments with a Light PhaseTM single-shot camera back attachment. A total of 605 images were recorded in 24-bit RGB resolution. After color correction and elimination of image size variation by differential cropping to 15.4 cm × 9.7 cm, all images were resampled to 3,078 × 1,942 pixels at a final resolution of 50 µm/pixel and stored as 605 one-Mb JPEG files together with a three-dimensional viewer. The resulting complete set of image data provides: (1) a source material suitable for generating computer models of the human ear; (2) a resource of high-quality digital images of anatomical cross sections from the human ear, and (3) a PC-based viewer of the temporal bone in three perpendicular planes of section.

用于颞骨解剖研究及中耳外科手术培训的高保真计算机建模、仿真与可视化系统，需基于一系列数字化解剖图像——此类图像既要覆盖大范围组织容积，又需具备高分辨率与高保真度的细节呈现能力。然而，耳部虚拟模型的独立开发者在使用现有图像库时，常受限于版权保护与图像分辨率不足的问题。
对一块新鲜冷冻的人类颞骨实施CT（Computed Tomography）扫描，并以25微米的间距进行连续切片；采用Light PhaseTM单次拍摄相机后背附件，以50至100微米的步长记录切片块表面的数字化图像，最终共采集到605张24位RGB分辨率的图像。
经色彩校正与差异化裁剪（将图像尺寸统一为15.4 cm × 9.7 cm以消除尺寸偏差）后，所有图像被重采样至3078×1942像素，最终分辨率为50微米/像素；最终以605张1兆字节的JPEG文件格式存储，并配套三维可视化查看器。
本完整图像数据集具备以下应用价值：(1) 可作为构建人类耳部计算机模型的优质源素材；(2) 提供高质量的人类耳部解剖断层数字化图像资源；(3) 搭载一款可在三个正交断层平面上查看颞骨结构的PC端可视化工具。