Visualization and Display for Image-Guided Therapy

Abstract

Where surgeons have historically depended on direct visual observation (or tactile sensing) of anatomy to inform their interventional manipulations, IGT clinical professionals now depend on computers to mediate between their visual systems and the data collected by various sensing and processing technologies. While these techniques might have originally been considered to be “making up” for the inability to directly observe the target anatomy during minimally invasive procedures, modern visualization techniques can integrate both pre- and intra-therapeutic data to go far beyond the limitations of direct human sensory perception in many dimensions. Critical to the success of these systems is a careful mapping of acquired data streams (both images and related multidimensional data) into a coherent computational model of the current state of the patient and the interventional equipment. From this model, visualization views can be extracted that inform the IGT team about the evolving clinical situation to enable decision making and validation of therapeutic effectiveness. Here we provide an overview of the options for display of various data types common in IGT settings.