Visualization methods for data analysis and planning in medical applications

Abstract

Time plays an important role in medicine, both the past and the future. The medical history of a patient represents the past, which needs to be understood by the physician to make the right decisions. The past contains two different kinds of information: measured data (such as blood pressure) and incidents (such as seizures). Planning therapies, on the other hand, requires looking into the future to a certain extent. Visual representations exist for both the past and the future, and they are very useful for getting a better understanding of data or a plan. This paper surveys visualization techniques for both data analysis and planning, and compares them based on a number of criteria.

Introduction

Analyzing data and planning therapy steps are two of the central parts of practical work in medicine. Both require an overview of the information: the recorded data is the basis for further planning, and therefore, needs to be understood, but on a more abstract level than the single data points; and the plan must be understood so that it can be followed.

Both tasks can be and are supported with graphical depictions of the data—it is much easier to see a trend on a chart than when reading a row of numbers. But for complex information, more sophisticated techniques are necessary to create effective visual representations that ease understanding of the data.

Information visualization (InfoVis) [22] deals with the effective display of abstract information (in contrast to directly understandable information like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computer tomography (CT) data). Other examples for typical InfoVis data are file systems, data bases (medical and other), and computer networks.

This paper surveys visualization techniques for three different applications: recording measured data (blood pressure, oxygen levels, etc.), recording incidents (seizures, pain attacks, etc.), and planning actions (therapeutic steps). Some techniques can be used for more than one application, and are, therefore, discussed in the different parts of the paper, with different requirements.

Such surveys have been done already [19], but with different requirements and a different focus.

This paper deals with the three different applications of InfoVis for time in three sections. Section 2 discusses methods for visualizing measurements, Section 3 presents techniques for displaying incidents, and Section 4 deals with methods that depict planned actions.