Development of 3-D Medical Image Visualization System

Abstract

This paper reports the development of a holographic video (holovideo) rendering system that uses standard 2-D medical imaging inputs and generates medical images of human body parts as holographic video with three-dimensional (3-D) realism. The system generates 3-D medical images by transforming a numerical description of a scene (such as in data from URI, CAT, PET, and X-ray databases) into a holographic fringe pattern and then displays the images on the image volume of a holovideo display system. The system uses specialized digital signal processors to scale up the computation and rendering speed of the holovideo computing system beyond what exists today. Holograms developed under this research have horizontal (holographic) resolution high enough for smooth binocular parallax and a (video) resolution in the vertical direction comparable to NTSC television. Thus, the holovideo rendering and display system provides medical personnel with the information essential for viewing internal organs of humans with accurate 3-D realism. It is envisioned that the commercializable system that will ultimately be developed in the course of this research program will be compact enough to be used as desktop equipment in a medical imaging platform and economical enough to be made available in adequate numbers to hospitals.