Visual enhancement of MR angiography images to facilitate planning of arteriovenous malformation interventions
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-1-2015
Journal
ACM Transactions on Applied Perception
Volume
12
Issue
1
URL with Digital Object Identifier
10.1145/2701425
Abstract
© 2015 ACM. The primary purpose of medical image visualization is to improve patient outcomes by facilitating the inspection, analysis, and interpretation of patient data. This is only possible if the users' perceptual and cognitive limitations are taken into account during every step of design, implementation, and evaluation of interactive displays. Visualization of medical images, if executed effectively and efficiently, can empower physicians to explore patient data rapidly and accurately with minimal cognitive effort. This article describes a specific case study in biomedical visualization system design and evaluation, which is the visualization of MR angiography images for planning arteriovenous malformation (AVM) interventions. The success of an AVM intervention greatly depends on the surgeon gaining a full understanding of the anatomy of the malformation and its surrounding structures. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to investigate the usability of visualization modalities involving contour enhancement and stereopsis in the identification and localization of vascular structures using objective user studies. Our preliminary results indicate that contour enhancement, particularly when combined with stereopsis, results in improved performance enhancement of the perception of connectivity and relative depth between different structures.