Virtual Reality as Human Interface and its application to Medical Ultrasonic diagnosis

Virtual reality is one of the intuitive man-machine interfaces, which uses human five senses. Virtual reality has many possibilities to enable medical doctor to understand diagnostic information intuitively and to do surgical operation more easily. In this paper, first of all, “What is Virtual Reality?” is introduced. After that, VR is applied to medical ultrasonic diagnosis to settle two problems, which are for ultrasonographer to lose orientation of tissue displayed in a monitor and to want to touch directly ultrasonic elastography image, respectively. VR technique can realize “Virtual See Through System” and “Virtual Palpation System”. Virtual See Through System means that a picture is displayed on the diseased part, its original position. In Virtual Palpation System, a typical haptic display, PHANToM is used. In this system, ultrasonographer or medical doctor can feel not only tumor’s stiffness but its depth. The sense is so close to real human body touch. A new haptic rendering technique is proposed for it. Virtual Reality can provide an intuitive human interface for medical ultrasonic diagnosis system.