Advanced Virtual Medicine:
Techniques and Applications for Medicine Oriented Computer Graphics

Keywords

Virtual Medicine, Medical Imaging, Virtual Endoscopy, Segmentation, Soft-Tissue Simulation.

Overview

The course will introduce techniques of modelling and simulating human tissue for medical applications. The course includes basic and advanced techniques of segmentation, registration, reconstruction and motion simulation in medical applications from disease detection to surgery simulation and surgery in virtual reality. This tutorial introduces various methods along with concrete clinic cases and present examples to convert research work to commercial applications.

Welcome and Introduction

After the introduction of the presenters of this tutorial, we will present several several applications of virtual medicine as appetizers for the whole tutorial. In particular, this will include virtual endoscopy, Cardiac Time Volume Analysis, Time Density Analysis, and functional MRI.

Foundations

In the second session, we will focus on fundamental methods and techniques for the acquisition and processing of medical data. Specifically, we will talk about medical imaging techniques, segmentation, classification, image registration and fusion, navigation with and rendering of medical data. Specifically, the latter topics will be in the context of virtual endoscopy and hardware-accelerated methods.

Applications of Virtual Medicine

After learning about the basic techniques required for virtual medicine, this talk will focus on existing virtual endoscopy systems and on support system for surgery. Furthermore, we will briefly talk about distributed virtual medicine. (The first part will actually start right after the foundations session.)

Motion Simulation

This session will present techniques for the simulation of the motion of a hip joint using dynamic Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

Soft-Tissue Simulation

In the final technical session, we will discuss the physical and mathematical foundations of the various techniques for soft-tissue modeling.

Questions and Answers

While there will be time during the various presentations for questions, we also provide this dedicated questions and answers session.

Prerequisite and Intended Audience

We assume a basic understanding of 3D graphics, visualization and medical-imaging technology. Although recent research results will be presented, we are not in particular targeting at experts in the field.

Presenters

Dirk Bartz is head of the research group on Visual Computing for Medicine (VCM) of the University of Tübingen. His recent works covers interactive virtual medicine and scientific visualization. In 2002, he received the NDI Young Investigator Award for his work in virtual endoscopy and intra-operative navigation. Dirk studied computer science and medicine at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg and the SUNY at Stony Brook. He received a Diploma (M.S.) in computer science from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Tübingen (both in Germany).

Hervé Delingette is a researcher at Sophia Antipolis, INRIA France. He made his Ph.D Modélisation, Déformation et Reconnaissance d'objets tridimensionnels a l'aide de maillages simplexes at Ecole Centrale de Paris, in 1994. He works on the field of 3D reconstruction and Image Segmentation, Surgery Simulation and Deformable Models and published his work in various journal and conferences.

Michael Hauth is a member of the research staff of the Computer Graphics Laboratory (GRIS) at the University of Tübingen. His current research focuses on simulation of deformable objects with applications in textile and medical animation. Michael studied computer sciences, physics and mathematics at the University of Tübingen. He received a Diploma in computer sciences in 1999 and a Diploma in mathematics in 2000. In 2000/2001 he held a visiting post as research assistant at the Numerical Analysis Group of the University of Geneva. He authored and co-authored several papers covering simulation and animation of deformable objects.

Alfred David Linney is Professor of Medical Physics, University College of London who has led the Graphics and Imaging group in the Medical Physics Department at University College London for more than fifteen years dedicated to the application of 3D graphics in surgical planning, simulation. He has also honorary position as Bioengineering Consultant to the Maxillofacial Unit of University College Hospital Trust. He obtained his Ph.D in the primary energy spectra of cosmic ray protons and helium nuclei at University of London.

Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann has pioneered research into virtual humans over the last 25 years. She has obtained several Bachelor's and Master's degrees in various disciplines and a PhD in Quantum Physics from the University of Geneva. From 1977 to 1989, she was a Professor at the University of Montreal in Canada. In 1989, she created MIRALab, an interdisciplinary lab at the University of Geneva. She is chairing a research group in the medical simulation of 3D articulations in the framework of the Swiss Research Center of Excellence COME. She has received several scientific and artistic awards and a few distinctions, the recent one being her election to the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences.

Klaus Mueller is currently an Assistant Professor at the Computer Science Department at Stony Brook University. His current research interests are computer graphics, medical-imaging, and virtual and augmented reality. He has authored or co-authored more than 30 conference and journal papers on volume rendering and on filter design. One of these papers won the Visualization "Best Paper" award in 1997. He has also won the Visualization "Best Hot Topic" award in 1999 and the NSF CAREER award in 2000. He has cochaired the 2001 and 2003 Volume Graphics Workshop and the 2002 Symposium on Volume Visualization and Graphics.

Yin Wu is a principal computer scientist in Terarecon Corporation, which is an imaging technology company that develops professional imaging applications, with special emphasis on medical imaging. Prior to her work at Terarecon she works on volume rendering and medical visualization in Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab (MERL). She received her Ph.D in Computer Science at University Geneva at 1998 on facial animation and biomechanics based aging simulation. Her research and development focus on physical simulation and interactive medical imaging visualization.