State Key Laboratory of Digital Medical Engineering, Jiangsu Key Lab of Remote Measurement and Control, School of Instrument Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, PR China.
State Key Laboratory of Digital Medical Engineering, Jiangsu Key Lab of Remote Measurement and Control, School of Instrument Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, PR China.
Comput Biol Med. 2023 Sep;163:107217. doi: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107217. Epub 2023 Jul 5.
Medical image visualization is an essential tool for conveying anatomical information. Ray-casting-based volume rendering is commonly used for generating visualizations of raw medical images. However, exposing a target area inside the skin often requires manual tuning of transfer functions or segmentation of original images, as preset parameters in volume rendering may not work well for arbitrary scanned data. This process is tedious and unnatural. To address this issue, we propose a volume visualization system that enhances the view inside the skin, enabling flexible exploration of medical volumetric data using virtual reality.
In our proposed system, we design a virtual reality interface that allows users to walk inside the data. We introduce a view-dependent occlusion weakening method based on geodesic distance transform to support this interaction. By combining these methods, we develop a virtual reality system with intuitive interactions, facilitating online view enhancement for medical data exploration and annotation inside the volume.
Our rendering results demonstrate that the proposed occlusion weakening method effectively weakens obstacles while preserving the target area. Furthermore, comparative analysis with other alternative solutions highlights the advantages of our method in virtual reality. We conducted user studies to evaluate our system, including area annotation and line drawing tasks. The results showed that our method with enhanced views achieved 47.73% and 35.29% higher accuracy compared to the group with traditional volume rendering. Additionally, subjective feedback from medical experts further supported the effectiveness of the designed interactions in virtual reality.
We successfully address the occlusion problems in the exploration of medical volumetric data within a virtual reality environment. Our system allows for flexible integration of scanned medical volumes without requiring extensive manual preprocessing. The results of our user studies demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of walk-in interaction for medical data exploration.
医学图像可视化是传递解剖信息的重要工具。基于光线投射的体绘制通常用于生成原始医学图像的可视化效果。然而，暴露皮肤内部的目标区域通常需要手动调整传输函数或对原始图像进行分割，因为体绘制中的预设参数可能不适用于任意扫描数据。这个过程既繁琐又不自然。为了解决这个问题，我们提出了一种体积可视化系统，该系统可以增强皮肤内部的视图，使用虚拟现实技术灵活地探索医学体积数据。
在我们提出的系统中，我们设计了一个虚拟现实接口，允许用户在数据内部行走。我们引入了一种基于测地距离变换的视图相关遮挡削弱方法来支持这种交互。通过结合这些方法，我们开发了一个具有直观交互的虚拟现实系统，方便对体积数据进行在线视图增强，以进行医学数据的探索和注释。
我们的渲染结果表明，所提出的遮挡削弱方法在削弱障碍物的同时有效地保留了目标区域。此外，与其他替代解决方案的比较分析突出了我们在虚拟现实中的方法的优势。我们进行了用户研究来评估我们的系统，包括区域注释和线条绘制任务。结果表明，与传统体绘制相比，我们的增强视图方法的准确性分别提高了 47.73%和 35.29%。此外，医学专家的主观反馈进一步支持了虚拟现实中设计交互的有效性。
我们成功地解决了虚拟现实环境中医学体积数据探索中的遮挡问题。我们的系统允许灵活地集成扫描的医学体积，而无需进行大量的手动预处理。用户研究的结果证明了走进去交互在医学数据探索中的可行性和有效性。
