Combining local and remote visualization techniques for interactive volume rendering in medical applications

Abstract

For a comprehensive understanding of tomographic image data in medicine, interactive and high-quality direct volume rendering is an essential prerequisite. This is provided by visualization using 3D texture mapping which is still limited to high-end graphics hardware. In order to make it available in a clinical environment, we present a system which uniquely combines local desktop computers and remote high-end graphics hardware. In this context, we exploit the standard visualization capabilities to a maximum which are available in the clinical environment. For 3D representations of high resolution and quality we access the remote specialized hardware. Various tools for 2D and 3D visualization are provided which meet the requirements of a medical diagnosis. This is demonstrated with examples from the field of neuroradiology which show the value of our strategy in practice.