Abstract Advanced imaging technologies are fast becoming
integral to medical education, medical training, diagnosis and surgery
simulation. Other advances in telecommunications will provide the necessary
infrastructure for real-time transmission and interaction with 3-D images
for teaching, diagnosis and consultation purposes in support of virtual
collaboratories, virtual hospitals and electronic housecalls. One impediment
to these applications has been the cost of graphics workstations required
for visualization and manipulation of the high-fidelity, large database
3-D images needed by educators and medical practitioners. Such workstations
and virtual environment hardware for stereoscopic imaging with manipulation
capability are typically high-end machines with equally high price tags.
We have been working to show the practicality of high-fidelity imaging
on low cost machines. This report documents our imaging of visible human
and other, patient-specific data on PC platforms. While current PC computer
technology does not permit manual rotation or other manipulation of high
fidelity stereoscopic images at the desired minimum of 15 frames/sec, it
does permit them to be displayed and rotated within a fraction of a second
to several seconds, with the actual time dependent upon the size of the
data set. This indicates that within a year or two high fidelity images
can be sent over a high speed internet for diagnosis and consultation,
to and from remote sites using a multiplicity of platforms.
Keywords: 3D model, stereoscopic image, virtual environment.
