Multi-Touch Table System for Medical Visualization: Application to Orthopedic Surgery Planning

Abstract

Medical imaging plays a central role in a vast range of healthcare practices. The usefulness of 3D visualizations has been demonstrated for many types of treatment planning. Nevertheless, full access to 3D renderings outside of the radiology department is still scarce even for many image-centric specialties. Our work stems from the hypothesis that this under-utilization is partly due to existing visualization systems not taking the prerequisites of this application domain fully into account. We have developed a medical visualization table intended to better fit the clinical reality. The overall design goals were two-fold: similarity to a real physical situation and a very low learning threshold. This paper describes the development of the visualization table with focus on key design decisions. The developed features include two novel interaction components for touch tables. A user study including five orthopedic surgeons demonstrates that the system is appropriate and useful for this application domain.

Interactive Exploration of Three-Dimensional Scientific Visualizations on Large Display Surfaces

“…Sultanum et al not only base their work on observational sessions with the target users [73] but also conducted an evaluation of their final design [74] with domain experts. This last study revealed that, while the participants liked the overall system design with its flexible and fluid data exploration, they too asked for specific precise views such as 2D projections, similar to what was reported by Klein et al [55] and Lundström et al [61]. The systems discussed so far rely on the interaction with 2D projections of the 3D data visualizations-largely due to the interaction problems that arise from the combination of touch input and stereoscopic projection (as discussed in Section 2.2).…”

“…Some types of data, however, inherently favor a horizontal mapping, such as surgery-based medical visualizations. Lundström et al [61] thus use such a horizontal setup to create their virtual surgery (a) Single-user interaction.…”

“…The virtual surgery table [61], a horizontal interactive surface for the analysis of medical datasets. Image courtesy of and © Sectra, used by permission.…”

“…Only two of the discussed systems [55,61] were specifically designed with collaboration and parallel input in mind. However, collaboration is still possible with the other systems when the different collaborators are taking turns.…”

Applications of Multi-Touch Tabletop Displays and Their Challenging Issues: An Overview

“…It is also aimed to identify best possible use for variety of purposes in different domains [39] [40]. These systems are used to investigate the co-located collaborative work [41] and for visualization of 2D/3D digital information [42][43].…”