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Generalized Temporal Focus + Context Framework for Improved Medical Data Exploration

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Abstract

Physicians use slices and 3D volume visualizations to place a diagnosis, establish a treatment plan and as a guide during surgical procedures. There is an observed difference in 2D and 3D visualization objectives of the various groups of specialists. We describe a generalized temporal focus + context framework that unifies different widely used and novel visualization methods. The framework is used to classify already existing common techniques and to define new techniques that can be used in medical volume visualization. The new techniques explore the time-dependent position of the framework focus region to combine 2D and 3D rendering inside the focus and to provide a new focus-driven context region that gives explicit spatial perception cues between the current and past regions of interest. An arbitrary-shaped focus region and no context rendering are two novel framework-based techniques that support improved planning of procedures that involve drilling or endoscopic exploration. The new techniques are quantitatively compared to already existing techniques by means of a user study.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all volunteers who participated in the user study, Prof. John Philbeck and Samar Alsaleh for their help in designing and executing the user study. This work has been sponsored by GW Centers and Institutes Facilitating Fund, The George Washington University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, The George Washington University, 801 22nd Street NW, Washington, DC, 20052, USA

    Nadezhda Radeva & James Hahn

  2. Department of Radiology, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

    Lucien Levy

Authors
  1. Nadezhda Radeva
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  2. Lucien Levy
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  3. James Hahn
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Correspondence to Nadezhda Radeva.

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Radeva, N., Levy, L. & Hahn, J. Generalized Temporal Focus + Context Framework for Improved Medical Data Exploration. J Digit Imaging 27, 207–219 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-013-9662-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-013-9662-z

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