A Web-Based Augmented Reality Approach to Instantly View and Display 4D Medical Images

Abstract

In recent years, development in non-invasive and painless medical imaging such as Computed Tomography (CT) or MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), has improved the process of diseases diagnosis and clarification, including tumours, cysts, injuries, and cancers. The full-body scanner with superior spatial resolution provides essential details of complicated anatomical structures for effective diagnostics. However, it is challenging for a physician in glance over a large data-set of over hundreds or even thousands of images (2D “slices” of the body). Consider a case when a doctor wants to view a patient’s CT or MRI scans for analysing, he needs to review and compare among many layers of 2D image stacks (many 2D slices make a 3D stack). If the patient is scanned multiple time (three consecutive months, for instance) to confirm the growth of the tumours, the dataset is turned to be 4D (time-stamp added). The manual analysing process is time-consuming, troublesome and labour-intensive. The innovation of Augmented Reality (AR) in the last few decades allows us to illuminate this problem. In this paper, we propose an AR technique which assists the doctor in instantly accessing and viewing a patient’s set of medical images quickly and easily. The doctor can use an optical head-mounted display such as the Google Glass, or a VR Headset such as the Samsung Gear VR, or a general smartphone such as the Apple iPhone X. He looks at one palm-sized AR Tag with patient’s document embedded with a QR code, and the smart device could detect and download the patient’s data using the decrypted QR code and display layers of CT or MRI images right on top of the AR tag. Looking in and out from the tag allows the doctor to see the above or below of the current viewing layer. Moreover, shifting the looking orientation left or right allows the doctor to see the same layer of images but in different timestamp (e.g. previous or next monthly scans). Our obtained results demonstrated that this technique enhances the diagnosing process, save cost and time for medical practice.