Method and apparatus for creating an isolated imaging of body structures

The invention relates to a method of forming an isolated visualization of body structures from a 3D image data set, which method includes the steps of forming a binary data set in which all image elements contained in the 3D image data set are classified as image elements which are to be visualized in isolated form and image elements which are not to be visualized, where filtering of the image values is performed by means of limit values of the image values and all image elements of the binary data set of image structures contained in the 3D image data set which are smaller than a predetermined size are selected, of forming a filtered data set by entering the image values of the original 3D image data set for the image elements which are characterized as image elements to be visualized in isolated form in the binary data set, and of forming the visualization of the isolated body structure from the filtered data set. The invention also relates to a device for carrying out the described method and also to programming means which carry out the described steps when executed on a computer.