VR interaction techniques for medical imaging applications

Methods of virtual reality (VR) offer new ways of human-computer interaction. Medicine is predestined to benefit from this new technology in many ways. Virtual environments can support physicians in their work, alleviate communication between specialists from different fields or be established in educational and training applications. For the field of visualization and analysis of three-dimensional anatomical images (e.g. CT or MRI scans), an application is introduced which expedites recognition of spatial coherencies and the exploration and manipulation of the 3D data. To avoid long periods of learning and accustoming and to facilitate work in such an environment: a powerful human-oriented interface is required allowing interactions similar to the real world and utilization of our natural experiences. This paper shows the use of eye tracking parameters for a level-of-detail algorithm and the integration of a glove-based hand gesture recognition into the virtual environment as an essential component of the human-machine interface. Furthermore, virtual bronchoscopy and virtual angioscopy are presented as examples for the use of the virtual environment. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.