Advanced visualization of medical models
The increase in the computing capacity of graphics cards and the emergence of virtual reality headsets
at relatively affordable prices in recent years has allowed the development and expansion of interactive
exploration of volumetric models in an immersive virtual reality environment.
Volume models, which are currently used in various fields such as medicine or industrial design, has
certain problems. One of the most important is how to move from the input values of the model to the
graphical representation that we see and how we can modify this representation interactively. For establishing
this correspondence, what is known as a transfer function is used, which in its most basic way relates the
input value to an opacity and a color. These types of transfer functions work well if they are defined
before the user explores the model in real-time, but their interactive modification during exploration is quite
cumbersome.
The purpose of this project is to test if the use of an interaction metaphor using style transfer function,
a type of transfer function that allows for greater abstraction of data and has a similar finishing than the
illustrative images of medical books, is more comfortable and user-friendly than an interaction metaphor
using a one-dimensional transfer function.
You can read the full work here (in Catalan).
Demonstrations
The videos below give a glimpse at the developed metaphors, the interactions and the volume rendering using style transfer functions. Please note that the demonstrations were recorded using a simulator (the project was designed with VR in mind, but due to COVID-19 I didn’t have access to the VR system when I recorded the videos) and interactions may seem rougher than they really are.
Results
The next gallery shows some of the possibilities of the tools developed in this project. The same human head’s volumetric model with and without segmentation is used to achieve different visualizations. This toy example illustrates how this technology could complement the exploration of the body in medicine.
