An Immersive Virtual Reality Environment for Diagnostic Imaging

Abstract

Purpose: Advancements in and adoption of consumer virtual reality (VR) are currently being propelled by numerous upcoming devices such as the Oculus Rift. Although applications are currently growing around the entertainment field, wide-spread adoption of VR devices opens up the potential for other applications that may have been unfeasible with past implementations of VR. A VR environment may provide an equal or larger screen area than what is provided with the use of multiple conventional displays while remaining comparatively cheaper and more portable making it an attractive option for diagnostic radiology applications. Methods: A VR application for the viewing of multiple image slices was designed using: the Oculus Rift head-mounted display (HMD), Unity, and 3D Slicer. Volumes loaded within 3D Slicer are sent to a Unity application that proceeds to render a scene for the Oculus Rift HMD. Users may interact with the images adjusting windowing and leveling using a handheld gamepad controller. Multiple images may be brought closer to the user for detailed inspection. Results: Application usage was demonstrated with the simultaneous visualization of longitudinal slices of a serial CT scan of a patient with a lung nodule. Pilot studies for validating usage of the VR system for differential diagnosis and remote collaboration were performed. Initial results suggest that using the VR system increased both task load and time taken to complete tasks, however, the resulting accuracy in assessing nodule growth of nodules was not significantly different than that achieved using a DICOM viewer application on a traditional display.

Immersive Radiation Experience for Interventional Radiology with Virtual Reality Radiation Dose Visualization Using Fast Monte Carlo Dose Estimation

“…Any location with sufficient space and a computer can be used to train medical staff in VR-DVS. This flexibility is expected to be particularly beneficial in cases with limited opportunities to use an actual apparatus [30][31][32]. Furthermore, dose visualization using VR technology applies to other modalities such as radiography, CT and radiotherapy.…”

Controlling camera movement in VR colonography

“…Since its inception, Virtual Reality (VR) has found applications across the medical domain, namely in medical education [18], surgical planning and training tasks [19,20,21]. More recently, VR has also been applied to diagnosis [22,23,24], where being able to sift through large and complex image datasets is crucial to producing insightful and complete results. Thus, controlling viewing position and orientation in expedited yet precise manners could potentially affect significant medical decisions.…”

Applying Modern Virtual and Augmented Reality Technologies to Medical Images and Models

“…To our knowledge, our group is the first to place these technologies directly into a radiology-based workflow. However, many other groups have created VR experiences that import medical images and are used for radiology reporting [54]. One example is a depth three-dimensional (D3D) augmented reality system that provides depth perception and focal point convergence that could potentially be used to identify and assess microcalcifications in the breast [55].…”