MediVol: An initial Study into Real-Time, Interactive 3D Visualisation of Soft Tissue Pathologies

None-invasive scanning technologies, such as MRI, have greatly enhanced our ability to ‘image’ the internal body, however the resultant visualisation is often difficult to comprehend due to both inadequacies in the scanning process and sub-optimal approaches to visualisation and data representation. These factors impose significant cognitive load on the user, requiring skill and experience to accurately comprehend the detail of the data, and intense concentration, in less experienced users, to understand the structures present. This research aims to improve the users’ ability to comprehend and explore the scanned data sets, through a combination of enhanced data processing and effective 3D visualisation that will seek refined representational paradigms to intuitively convey meaning to the user. This is achieved in a real-time 3D exploration environment, utilising recent developments in graphics hardware, which enables the user to both refine the visual representation and effectively explore the data set, thereby defining a prototype for enhanced medical visualisation and exploration. Ultimately this will improve diagnosis, procedural planning and most importantly communication, both between medical clinicians and the patient themselves.