Meyer, Joerg

Moritz, Elke

Wischgoll, Thomas

English

CORE

Wright State University CORE Scholar Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications Computer Science & Engineering 2004 Virtual Exploration of a Cardiovascular System Elke Moritz Thomas Wischgoll Wright State University - Main Campus, thomas.wischgoll@wright.edu Joerg Meyer Follow this and additional works at: https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/cse  Part of the Computer Sciences Commons, and the Engineering Commons Repository Citation Moritz, E., Wischgoll, T., & Meyer, J. (2004). Virtual Exploration of a Cardiovascular System. . https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/cse/343 This Abstract is brought to you for free and open access by Wright State University’s CORE Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of CORE Scholar. For more information, please contact library-corescholar@wright.edu. Virtual Exploration of a Cardiovascular SystemElke Moritz∗, Thomas Wischgoll†, and Joerg Meyer‡University of California, IrvineVirtual biomedical models can help to better understand how dis-eases affect the function of parts and organs of the human body. Bythoroughly exploring such a model, scientists and surgeons are ableto analyze the effects of different treatment options, and ultimatelyfind more appropriate ways to prevent diseases. Specifically a vir-tual model of the vascular system of the heart can aid in findingout more about the way the heart functions, and might give insightsin what causes conditions such as coronary heart disease (CHD),which still is the number one killer in the United States. We havedeveloped a system which allows the exploration of a detailed ge-ometric 3D model of the cardiovascular tree in a scalable virtualenvironment in real time.The implemented system offers both an exterior and an interiorview of the data. The exterior view of the cardiovascular tree al-lows for a global examination and measurement of global distances.The camera and viewpoint stay fixed, while the vascular tree movesin front of the user. Individual segments can be picked or high-lighted. Labels attached to selected segments show quantitative in-formation about the data. Analysis and measuring tools allow forprecise determination of, for instance, distances between differentvessel segments, the length of such segments, and angles at bifur-cation points. In addition, by means of visual inspection, efficientvalidation of the simulated vascular tree helps to quickly identifyareas of interest and potential problem zones.The interior of the cardiovascular tree can be inspected during a dy-namic virtual fly-through simulation, which provides a view com-parable to a traditional endoscopic examination. This interactive,guided or free fly-through provides detailed information about theinterior of the cardiovascular structure, for example bifurcation an-gles and diameters of vessels. The camera and viewpoint travelalong the center lines of the vessels during the guided exploration,thereby enabling a smooth traversal of the tree. At each bifurca-tion either a pre-defined path is chosen or the path can be pickedinteractively. At any time, the navigation mode can be switched tomanual. Here, the user has complete manual control over the posi-tion and orientation of the camera and/or the viewpoint, while thevascular tree stays fixed. The user is free to roam the current ves-sel segment. Thereby, the system provides an experience similar tosteering a submarine.The dataset can be displayed both from a global point of view(overview map) and from an interior point of view (fly-throughmode), thus enabling effective exploration and interpretation of thecardiovascular tree. Different views of the same tree provide a vari-ety of geometrical and structural information. Being able to switchbetween an external and an internal view of the vascular structureor being able to observe both views simultaneously enables the userto efficiently accomplish a variety of data exploration tasks.∗e-mail: emoritz@uci.edu†e-mail: wischgoll@siggraph.org‡e-mail: jmeyer@uci.eduFigure 1: Exterior and interior view of a cardiovascular tree (leftcircumflex [LCX] coronary artery).Figure 2: The Logitechc© WingManR© Cordless RumblepadTM in adesktop environment.Since we want to effectively explore the 3D model, a 2D input de-vice, such as a desktop mouse, obviously has its limitations. Anadditional cordless USB input device supplements our system andprovides unrestricted navigational control in 3D. As a result, thesystem provides a flexible low-cost 3D virtual environment, whichenables efficient and intuitive 3D navigation. In the current im-plementation, the Logitechc© WingManR© Cordless RumblepadTMwas chosen as the main 3D interaction device, because it providesseveral digital and analog joysticks that emulate six-degrees-of-freedom input. The software is scalable to various virtual envi-ronments (VEs). Such a VE facilitates the simulation of computer-aided diagnoses similar to those obtained in real-world surgery en-vironments.In the future, we plan to evaluate different navigation modes and in-put devices for a comparison with traditional real-world endoscopicnavigation. In addition, we are going to investigate in a user studyif other features of this type of input device, such as the rumble ca-pability of the gamepad, can be used to enhance the user experiencewhen a collision with a vessel wall occurs.AcknowledgmentsThis work was sponsored in part by the National Institute ofMental Health (NIMH) through a subcontract with the Center forNeuroscience at the University of California, Davis (award no.5 P20 MH60975), by the National Partnership for Advanced Com-putational Infrastructure (NPACI), Interaction Environments (IE)Thrust (award no. 10195430 00120410), and by the Departmentof Biomedical Engineering in the Henry Samueli School of Engi-neering at the University of California, Irvine. The authors grate-fully acknowledge Ghassan S. Kassab and Benny Kaimovitz of theCardiovascular Biomechanics Laboratory at the University of Cali-fornia, Irvine, for providing the data sets.

Virtual Exploration of a Cardiovascular System

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Virtual Exploration of a Cardiovascular System

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