3D Visualization in Digital Medicine Using XR Technology

Abstract

Nowadays, virtual reality is a new and rapidly developing technology that provides the opportunity for a new, more immersive form of data visualization. Evaluating digitized pathological serial sections and establishing the appropriate diagnosis is one of the key task of the pathologist in the daily work. The type of tools used by pathologists in the evaluation of samples has not changed much in recent decades. On the other hand, the amount of information required to establish an accurate diagnosis has been significantly increased. Nowadays, pathologists are working with the help of multiple high-resolution desktop monitors. Instead of the large screens, the use of virtual reality can serve as an alternative solution, which provides virtualized working space for pathologists during routine sample evaluation. In our research, we defined a new immersive working environment for pathologists. In our proposed solution we visualize several type of digitized medical image data with the corresponding meta data in 3D, and we also defined virtualized functions that support the evaluation process. The main aim of this paper is to present the new possibilities provided by 3D visualization and virtual reality in digital pathology. The paper presents a new virtual reality-based examination environment, as well as software functionalities that are essential for 3D pathological tissue evaluation.

Real-Time Network Video Data Streaming in Digital Medicine

“…This means that there is a central server that performs the computations related to the 3D visualization and transmits the results to the clients. The method of 3D display performed by the server is available in previous works [29]. In addition to the server, there are one or more client applications that receive the data and display them to the user.…”

Low latency 3D image streaming in medicine

“…3D visualization programs, which make digitized medical samples available for examination in a 3D environment after registration of the samples, must be treated separately from "simple" 2D visualization programs. In the case of certain imaging modalities, 3D visualization is already part of routine diagnostics, such as:  Computer tomography  Magnetic resonance imaging  Optical coherence tomography However, the 3D reconstruction [1][2] of digitized serial sections in a suitable way is still a research area in digital pathology [3]. Several factors make the 3D visualization of digitized pathological samples, so-called Whole Slide Image (WSI) samples, difficult.…”