A novel non-contact interactive medical image viewing system

Abstract

Currently, photographic film is the most commonly used medium for viewing medical images in hospitals. However, as digitalized medical images need to be printed on photographic film first, such kind of viewing pattern has an extremely limited use A homogeneous white light source is also needed to observe the anatomic structure clearly. Such observation pattern is very limited to the circumstances in which it is used In this paper, a novel interactive non-contact system is developed to observe multimodal medical images. For this system, a series of gestures is defined, and a depth sensor is used to capture the speckle pattern of infrared laser, which irradiates to the person in front of the system By analyzing the morphologic atlas of the depth photo, the 3-D structure and the motion of the captured image can be obtained in real time. Then, all kinds of operations on medical images, including transformation, contrast adjustment, volume rendering, can be achieved through different gesture regulations. The system developed realizes flexible observation of medical images using digitalized images directly, which greatly reduces expenses for the clinical diagnosis. The system does not need any contact with the medium. Therefore, it can be utilized by doctors doing clinical surgery.