  CT image-based diagnosis of the stomach is developed as a new way of
diagnostic method. A virtual unfolded (VU) view is suitable for displaying its
wall. In this paper, we propose a semi-automated method for generating VU views
of the stomach. Our method requires minimum manual operations. The
determination of the unfolding forces and the termination of the unfolding
process are automated. The unfolded shape of the stomach is estimated based on
its radius. The unfolding forces are determined so that the stomach wall is
deformed to the expected shape. The iterative deformation process is terminated
if the difference of the shapes between the deformed shape and expected shape
is small. Our experiments using 67 CT volumes showed that our proposed method
can generate good VU views for 76.1% cases.
