Multi-touch exploration of CT medical data with an iPad

Abstract

Medical Computed Tomography (CT) scan has been widely used to give physicians a better picture of the patients’ medical condition. This technology made many preventive treatments possible. However, the scan data is a compilation of 2-Dimensional (2D) slices taken in rapid succession to form a detailed 3- Dimensional (3D) representation of the body.

In this case, a 3D visualization would be more appropriate to represent the data in a more natural perspective to the user. It has been proven by research that a human will be better able to spot specific patterns from a mass of data if given the appropriate visualization. However, there are not many applications in the market that are capable of producing a CT data 3D visualization of suitable quality. This thus motivated the author to develop the CTScanViewer application.

The application is equipped with the ability to visualize patient CT scan data in 3D. It also offers rotate, translate, and scale operations on the visualization to give the user the most intuitive set of interaction possible. This is achieved by incorporating multi-touch interaction, made popular by the Apple iPhone, into the application.

Effects of the visualization going through manipulation by the Multi-touch interaction were recorded and discussed in the report, giving a thorough analysis of the multi-touch interaction.

At the end of the project, CTScanViewer managed to provide the 3D visualization of the CT scan data in a natural way to aid understanding of the data.

In the future, the CTScanViewer is expected to provide more visualization and file formats, networking support, and cross-platform compatibility.